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Unique Locations and Strange Places!

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Posts

  • L|amaL|ama Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Burtletoy wrote: »
    Erich Zahn wrote: »
    The people who were walled into the Great Wall volunteered to do so. The engineers had already accounted for such spaces in their original design because burying people alive is actually a pretty common form of ritual sacrifice.

    Lots of people DID get buried during the construction of the Hoover Dam, crushed to death by tons of gravel, falling concrete slabs, and sand/dirt.

    where are you getting this from, about the wall? It sounds fairly made up.

    Also:

    The part about the Hoover Dam is made up, as well.

    Edit:
    Actually, the dam was poured in relatively small sections, so about all a fallen worker had to do to get his face clear of the rising concrete was to stand up. Officially, 96 dam workers died of various causes, and 112 persons unofficially, but none were permanently buried in concrete.

    Somebody did get killed and partially buried by a collapsing formwork, but they ended up pulling the body out.

    L|ama on
  • President RexPresident Rex Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Great Wall bodies:
    Millions were conscripted to assist building the wall, millions may have even died during construction, but as far as is known none are actually buried in the wall URL="http://books.google.com/books?id=C5w9M8n9_a8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false"]here's a book[/URL. As a bonus, it's also a source that clarifies that the wall is, in fact, not visible from space with the naked eye (and why would it be, it is basically the width of a small river?). That doesn't stop you from seeing it with a camera, though.



    Going back to other, cool, unique (geology-based) places:

    Hawaii's lava tubes!

    maunaloalavatubesurface.jpg

    The main Hawaiian island has 5 volcanoes. Because Hawaii's magma comes from deep in the mantle instead of plate boundaries, it tends to have low silica content. Having less silica makes the lava more fluid and less explosive, which lets it do all sorts of fancy things - like build lava tubes. The tubes generally form when the surface of flowing lava hardens, insulating the inside. That lava remains hot and can flow farther, but eventually ends up leaving a hollow space behind. Subsequent eruptions may make use of these tubes, but as the volcano grows some may be antiquated and cut off from the rest of the network.

    Which is why Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park even has some tubes you can go inside.

    800px-Thurston_Lava_Tube_Edit_1.jpg

    (I guess it may be important to note that lava tubes can also form from very hot magma burrowing through the ground).

    Hawaii_hotspot_poster.jpg

    Hawaii basically exists because a hotspot in the mantle continually allows magma to eek towards the surface. The Pacific plate is slowly moving NW (which is why the Hawaiian islands get progressively smaller in that direction, as the plate over the hotspot has moved, removing the source of magma, killing the volcano and letting the subsequent islands erode). This effectively makes Mauna Loa (Hawaii's primary volcano) the biggest volcano on Earth (and the tallest mountain when measured from the ocean floor). It's basically layers upon layers of lava flows climbing over 9,000m - reaching through to break the ocean's surface (...and continuing high enough to have a snow-capped peak).

    President Rex on
  • Xenogear_0001Xenogear_0001 Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Went to Hawaii when I was ten and got to go out on a couple different lava flows that had hardened--one during the day and one at night. During the latter, I could look up at the peak of the mountain and see the faint red glow of active magma reflecting off of the clouds. Twas awesome, and arguably more impacting than being right above the sunken hull of the U.S.S. Arizona (which still leaks a drop of oil to the surface every couple seconds).

    Xenogear_0001 on
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  • The CatThe Cat Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    The Cat...jesus christ this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Where do I find this insanity/confirmation property developers are corrupt as fuck?

    Up behind Clifton Beach, just north of Cairns. I tried to find it on google earth, but I can't seem to spot it...

    The Cat on
    tmsig.jpg
  • UrQuanLord88UrQuanLord88 Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Hm. Since you guys started with abandoned/creepy places, Haw Par Villa is probably one of the weirder places. Located in Singapore, it started out as a place to teach traditional chinese values then reopened as a amusement park later on. Now it is closed but will reopen soon. They tried to milk it for money but for some reason it wasn't making any. I wonder why. Glad it is reopening soon though.

    I won't show you the mostly NSFW pictures but with a simple Google Image Search, you can see the various statues and figurines of Chinese mythology (Journey to the West for example), including a rather gruesome depiction of the Ten Courts of Hell (basically the Asian version of Dante's Inferno).

    I remember going as a kid, thinking that it was going to be like Disneyland. Boy was I mistaken. The journey through hell water ride was basically a hellish version of the Its a small world ride.

    Here's a teaser:
    cLBeM.jpg
    diXYl.jpg
    NSFW? http://i.imgur.com/Tmia8.jpg
    And many more!

    UrQuanLord88 on
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    urquanlord88.png
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  • Aroused BullAroused Bull Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    This place.
    54859015431713747798.jpg

    I have no idea where it is, or what it is. Anyone know?

    Aroused Bull on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Holy shit! That's my house! Take it down Aroused Bull, you are invading my privacy.

    Apothe0sis on
  • ImprovoloneImprovolone Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    That would be Devil's Peak in (bordering?) Capetown
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Peak_(Cape_Town)

    Improvolone on
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  • DarkCrawlerDarkCrawler Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Raiju wrote: »
    That stuff about burying bodies in the Great Wall sounds like hearsay and legends used to impress tourists and/or exaggerate the cruelty of the various emperors of the time by the local populace, at least to me (or someone's been watching The Mummy 3 one too many times). If there really are bodies found buried, please prove it with cited examples from reputable sources. Until then, I call shenanigans on this myth.

    On a side note, the Eastern European bone ossuary was a location used and shot in the first Dungeons & Dragons movie (not that it helped that movie any), if I recall.

    Speaking of the First Emperor's insanity, on the non-myth way, the motherfucking Terracotta Army and the rest of his tomb deserves a mention:

    800px-Xian_museum.jpg

    800px-Terracotta_Army_Pit_1_-_2.jpg

    800px-Terracotta_pmorgan.jpg

    Thousands of soldiers, several regiments worth. Chariots, horses, weaponry, fortifications. None identical. In their heyday they were vividly painted as well.

    Pyramids are cool but...this guy took an army with him to the afterlife. Seems like he went on the conquer heaven.

    DarkCrawler on
  • ImprovoloneImprovolone Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Its more impressive when you realise that every statue is unique, and not in the made by hand every detail wont be the same type of unique, but that every statue is of a DIFFERENT FUCKING PERSON.

    Improvolone on
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  • TomantaTomanta Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    There is a place in Houston that has a 1/3 scale replica of the Terra Cotta army. 6,000 soldiers worth. They also have a 1/20th scale replica of the Forbidden City.

    Bonus: All of their exhibits were made in China.

    Here's their website.

    That was a fun afternoon.

    Tomanta on
  • Gandalf_the_CrazedGandalf_the_Crazed Vigilo ConfidoRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I dunno, I've seen the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were, granted, more impressive than anything I can see here in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. But at the same time, they weren't as...grandiose, I suppose, as I had imagined.

    Still worth seeing, but more impressive in the "holy shit that emperor dude was crazy" way than anything else.

    Gandalf_the_Crazed on
    PEUsig_zps56da03ec.jpg
  • Hank_ScorpioHank_Scorpio Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Tam wrote: »
    wow
    I would really love to visit Socotra and the cloud forests
    and also this place:
    wrxshz.jpg
    just for the view

    Where is this? I desperately hope that's a hotel of some kind of at least owned by someone who let's people inside.

    Hank_Scorpio on
  • Hank_ScorpioHank_Scorpio Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I dunno, I've seen the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were, granted, more impressive than anything I can see here in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. But at the same time, they weren't as...grandiose, I suppose, as I had imagined.

    Still worth seeing, but more impressive in the "holy shit that emperor dude was crazy" way than anything else.

    Kind of how I felt about Stonehenge. I wanted to go there for years, thinking it would be an amazing sight and everything. When I finally got there, I was really underwhelmed. Not only are the stones not quite as big as I imagined, but you can't even get near them because it's a tourist hotspot. You have to walk around in a line full of people just looking at it from afar. The line barring you from getting any closer is right behind me in this pic:
    4049000405_d9a431d157_z.jpg?zz=1

    Hank_Scorpio on
  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I dunno, I've seen the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were, granted, more impressive than anything I can see here in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. But at the same time, they weren't as...grandiose, I suppose, as I had imagined.

    Still worth seeing, but more impressive in the "holy shit that emperor dude was crazy" way than anything else.

    Kind of how I felt about Stonehenge. I wanted to go there for years, thinking it would be an amazing sight and everything. When I finally got there, I was really underwhelmed. Not only are the stones not quite as big as I imagined, but you can't even get near them because it's a tourist hotspot. You have to walk around in a line full of people just looking at it from afar. The line barring you from getting any closer is right behind me in this pic:
    4049000405_d9a431d157_z.jpg?zz=1


    Ahem.

    The trick is to find a University 'class' with a study abroad week over spring break. say one that covers prehistoric England. You take this course, and your professor just happens to be old school buddies with the guy that runs stonehenge.

    So, you go to the big stone circle about 7am, roughly 2 hours before its opened to the public. And you walk around inside the circle. Yes, inside the circle. Of course you are escorted around by the only armed guards in all of england, who quite frankly tell you that if you sit, stand, or remove anything from the circle at all, the will shoot you.

    And no, they were not joking. I'm pretty sure they would have shot us. It's not all that much more impressive inside the circle, other than all the people with their fancy schmancy digital cameras that stopped working. and my little disposable kodak camera was the only one that worked. But other than that, it's kinda what you see.

    lonelyahava on
  • adytumadytum The Inevitable Rise And FallRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    What are you going to steal? Grass?

    adytum on
  • BloodsheedBloodsheed Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I dunno, I've seen the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were, granted, more impressive than anything I can see here in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. But at the same time, they weren't as...grandiose, I suppose, as I had imagined.

    Still worth seeing, but more impressive in the "holy shit that emperor dude was crazy" way than anything else.

    Kind of how I felt about Stonehenge. I wanted to go there for years, thinking it would be an amazing sight and everything. When I finally got there, I was really underwhelmed. Not only are the stones not quite as big as I imagined, but you can't even get near them because it's a tourist hotspot. You have to walk around in a line full of people just looking at it from afar. The line barring you from getting any closer is right behind me in this pic:
    4049000405_d9a431d157_z.jpg?zz=1

    That's why, when I was vacationing over there, I found Avebury much more interesting.

    Bloodsheed on
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  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    pieces of the chalk that litter the ground. You might attempt to pick up a pebble or something due to it's 'magical properties'. I dunno. I wasn't going to argue with the British police officer that had a gun.

    Edit:: Yesss Avesbury was fantastic! There is one of the stones called, I think, The Devil's Seat, that actually has something like a seat carved out in it. So cool.

    I really wish I had a scanner so I could upload all my pictures from that trip. Avesbury, Maiden Castle, the old Burial Mounds, the White Horse, Cerne Giant.

    lonelyahava on
  • Aroused BullAroused Bull Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    So, you go to the big stone circle about 7am, roughly 2 hours before its opened to the public. And you walk around inside the circle. Yes, inside the circle. Of course you are escorted around by the only armed guards in all of england, who quite frankly tell you that if you sit, stand, or remove anything from the circle at all, the will shoot you.
    I can promise this isn't true, because there are have been a couple of police officers with giant fuck-off guns posted unnervingly close to where I live 24/7 for the past year or so.

    Aroused Bull on
  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    So, you go to the big stone circle about 7am, roughly 2 hours before its opened to the public. And you walk around inside the circle. Yes, inside the circle. Of course you are escorted around by the only armed guards in all of england, who quite frankly tell you that if you sit, stand, or remove anything from the circle at all, the will shoot you.
    I can promise this isn't true, because there are have been a couple of police officers with giant fuck-off guns posted unnervingly close to where I live 24/7 for the past year or so.

    This was pre 9/11 that I went. Spring of 2001, so.. :P

    lonelyahava on
  • Hank_ScorpioHank_Scorpio Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Bloodsheed wrote: »
    I dunno, I've seen the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were, granted, more impressive than anything I can see here in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. But at the same time, they weren't as...grandiose, I suppose, as I had imagined.

    Still worth seeing, but more impressive in the "holy shit that emperor dude was crazy" way than anything else.

    Kind of how I felt about Stonehenge. I wanted to go there for years, thinking it would be an amazing sight and everything. When I finally got there, I was really underwhelmed. Not only are the stones not quite as big as I imagined, but you can't even get near them because it's a tourist hotspot. You have to walk around in a line full of people just looking at it from afar. The line barring you from getting any closer is right behind me in this pic:
    4049000405_d9a431d157_z.jpg?zz=1

    That's why, when I was vacationing over there, I found Avebury much more interesting.

    I went to Laycock and it was amazing. I want to go back and check out places like that and spend more time hiking in Scotland.

    Hank_Scorpio on
  • Hank_ScorpioHank_Scorpio Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    So, you go to the big stone circle about 7am, roughly 2 hours before its opened to the public. And you walk around inside the circle. Yes, inside the circle. Of course you are escorted around by the only armed guards in all of england, who quite frankly tell you that if you sit, stand, or remove anything from the circle at all, the will shoot you.
    I can promise this isn't true, because there are have been a couple of police officers with giant fuck-off guns posted unnervingly close to where I live 24/7 for the past year or so.

    These guys are at Windsor Castle: 4049739300_ed299f070f_z.jpg?zz=1

    Hank_Scorpio on
  • tehmarkentehmarken BrooklynRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    adytum wrote: »
    Rebirth island is way less interesting than Call of Duty would leave me to believe.

    Also, I'm laughing at the how dramatic the guy in the video is being.

    There could be anthrax spores on this 60 year old broken, exposed-to-the-elements test tube! And these completely unsophisticated dirt farmer Uzbekis could have some way to identify it, contain it, transport it, and sell it on the black market!

    Haha, yeah, the video is a little over dramatic.

    But I bet you could make a really good horror video game based there, filled with leftover soviet bioweapons and mutated chimps. mutated SOVIET chimps. led by a mutated soviet chimp stalin!

    edit: I just realized I posted without refreshing and accidentally skipped a page of content, sorry guys >_<
    edit2: I'm gonna put together something about Lurray Caverns soon, we need some more caves in this thread.

    tehmarken on
  • tehmarkentehmarken BrooklynRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Starting my post about Lurray Caverns. This is one of my favorite locations in the world. Growing up in Virginia, I went on field trips here almost every year as a child. One of the coolest things is this piece of genious:

    luray_caverns_stalacpipe_organ.jpg
    STALACPIPE ORGAN
    Located in the Cathedral is the Great Stalacpipe Organ, the world's largest musical instrument. Stalactites covering 3 1/2 acres of the surrounding caverns produce tones of symphonic quality when electronically tapped by rubber-tipped mallets. This one-of-a-kind instrument was conceived by Mr. Leland W. Sprinkle of Springfield, Virginia, a mathematician and electronics scientist at the Pentagon.
    After visiting the caverns with his son and experiencing the organ-like sounds of a stalactite being tapped, Mr. Sprinkle submitted a complex plan for a stalactite-tapping instrument. It took 36 years of frustrating research, design and experimentation to bring his dream to its present state of perfection. Three years alone were spent searching the vast chambers of the caverns to select and carefully sand stalactites to precisely match the musical scale. Only two stalactites were found to be in tune naturally.
    The four-keyboard console of The Great Stalacpipe Organ was constructed by the Klann Organ Supply Company of Waynesboro, Virginia, to meet the peculiar needs of this subterranean installation. Then the organ was connected to various stalactites with over five miles of wiring.
    Today, the organ, featured on Ripley's Believe It or Not, plays a variety of songs, many chosen for their range and deep, resonate tones. Visitors stand enthralled as haunting melody and chords reverberate throught the vaulted ceilings. The songs, which are played by an automated system, change seasonally. The organ can also be played manually from the console, as Leland Sprinkle did for many years.

    Fun fact: supposedly the part where the guy and his kid "experienced" the organ-like sound of a stalactite being tapped is when the guy's kid walked into a stalactite and bonked his head.

    Next up is the largest pool of water in the cavern, named Dream Lake.
    0227_caverns_600.jpg

    The water is so still it reflects the ceiling perfectly. The water doesn't even reach 2 feet deep at the deepest point, but it looks like a cluttered pit of stalagmites. It's a really cool optical illusion to see in person. The horizontal bit of light reflects on the surface of the water, and everything below/in front of that in the photo is the water surface.


    Another amazing part of the caverns is the "drapery" formations. The most impressive is Saracen's Tent.
    3702443756_0d63177b23.jpg4022865617_d9257b4232.jpg

    The pictures don't really do it justice, but it really looks like the rock is a draped sheet that was petrified somehow.

    tehmarken on
  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    ahh Lurray Caverns. I remember going there once as a child.

    so cool.

    lonelyahava on
  • tehmarkentehmarken BrooklynRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I wish I could find some good photography of the rare coloured portions of the caverns. It's moslty calcite, which is plain white, and the brown stone. But the areas where copper seeped in with the calcite has some great blue and green shimmery waves in the walls and pillars.

    I also remember a place in the caverns where there are crystal formations that looks like white moss. But I'm pretty sure that's a photo restricted area and thus there aren't any photographs (at least not that I can find).

    tehmarken on
  • PatboyXPatboyX Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    So, you go to the big stone circle about 7am, roughly 2 hours before its opened to the public. And you walk around inside the circle. Yes, inside the circle. Of course you are escorted around by the only armed guards in all of england, who quite frankly tell you that if you sit, stand, or remove anything from the circle at all, the will shoot you.
    I can promise this isn't true, because there are have been a couple of police officers with giant fuck-off guns posted unnervingly close to where I live 24/7 for the past year or so.

    This was pre 9/11 that I went. Spring of 2001, so.. :P

    Spring of 2001 makes it more impressive since everything was shit-hard to get in to due to Mad Cow scare.

    PatboyX on
    "lenny bruce is not afraid..."
    brush1rt1.jpg
  • Crimson KingCrimson King Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    The Glasshouse Mountains.

    glasshouse1.jpg

    We don't really have mountains very much in Australia, but here in Queensland we have these for some reason.

    Crimson King on
  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    might have been spring 2000. lol i'm so old. i don't remember

    lonelyahava on
  • CycloneRangerCycloneRanger Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    The Glasshouse Mountains.

    glasshouse1.jpg

    We don't really have mountains very much in Australia, but here in Queensland we have these for some reason.
    Well, they're not proper mountains, but those are cool looking. Are they old volcanic necks?

    Also, that place is green as hell.

    CycloneRanger on
  • Crimson KingCrimson King Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    The Glasshouse Mountains.

    img

    We don't really have mountains very much in Australia, but here in Queensland we have these for some reason.
    Well, they're not proper mountains, but those are cool looking. Are they old volcanic necks?

    Also, that place is green as hell.

    I have no idea what the hell they are, but, probably. Also Southeast Queensland is a very green sort of place. It comes with being subtropical.

    Here is the fantastically named Mt Tibrogargan.

    DNE7_MtTibrogargan.jpg

    Crimson King on
  • Pi-r8Pi-r8 Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I was really fascinated by this description of the Japanese "alternate universe Disneyland". Unfortunately it's closed now:
    http://www.themeparkreview.com/japan2004/nara1.htm

    Pi-r8 on
  • CycloneRangerCycloneRanger Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    The Glasshouse Mountains.

    img

    We don't really have mountains very much in Australia, but here in Queensland we have these for some reason.
    Well, they're not proper mountains, but those are cool looking. Are they old volcanic necks?

    Also, that place is green as hell.

    I have no idea what the hell they are, but, probably. Also Southeast Queensland is a very green sort of place. It comes with being subtropical.

    Here is the fantastically named Mt Tibrogargan.

    Yeah, Wikipedia says they are volcanic plugs (also called volcanic necks). They're formed when a volcano weathers away through the millenia and only the hard core or "throat" is left standing. We have a few in Colorado, although they're mostly barren things.

    Here's one of ours (the thing in the foreground, not the mountains):
    DSCN1431_small_credited.JPG

    CycloneRanger on
  • dlinfinitidlinfiniti Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    i dont understand why theres a different disneyland when they have a perfectly good tokyo disneyland

    dlinfiniti on
    AAAAA!!! PLAAAYGUUU!!!!
  • tehmarkentehmarken BrooklynRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    there's a lot of things in japan that don't make any sense. common sense seems to not exist here ;p

    tehmarken on
  • Bag of AdjectivesBag of Adjectives Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    The Cat wrote: »
    Heh. There's a concrete Captain Cook up in Cairns to which the same thing happened. The hotel it stood out the front of is long gone, but the local businesses pay for its upkeep. Even funnier, the sculptor rendered him giving the heil in the general direction of the CBD.

    I don't think I ever posted this here, but some workmates and I found a really odd place while doing recon for a mapping project in Cairns back in the day:
    01noentry.jpg
    Signs like that are for other people. We climbed around.
    02climb.jpg
    No joke, this driveway switchbacked at plus-30 degrees for over a kilometre. No way that had council approval, one bend was clearly on the verge of collapse.
    03hmmm.jpg
    And at the top. Seems like the owner ran out of money and/or concrete. Their phone number was painted on the side of the building, presumably in case of low-flying billionaire superheroes. Thing is, I think the owner was still living there. Water and power were hooked up to the upper floor, a tank was installed, and it looked like a space on the upper story had been effectively enclosed. Zombie and velociraptor-proofed, nice.
    04up.jpg
    There was something about the place
    05view.jpg
    And the view was like this for about 300 degrees. Yeah, that was an interesting afternoon.

    So, as a former resident of Trinity Beach (the place you can see over in the last photo) and avid mountain biker in those hills throughout my youth I can give a little more background on that place.

    It was council approved, but the driveway was too steep and the hairpins too tight to get trucks up there with building supplies. Hence, the owner elected to get the building supplies helicoptered in and ran out of money, meaning the structure was never finished. It is not and was not to my knowledge, ever inhabited. The gate can be opened and the driveway is / was driveable, if memory serves me correctly.

    Bag of Adjectives on
  • The CatThe Cat Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    hey, thanks, I always wondered! Yeah one of the bends was quite deeply cut into the hill, and it was clearly heading for a landslip. I wouldn't muck about up there in the wet season. We couldn't open the gate at the time, but that was a good three or four years ago.

    Re the Glasshouses, they were subsurface magma intrusions into the surrounding sandstone, which has since worn away. Not all of them were actually volcanic necks, although there's enough leftover basalt flows on the nearby plateaux to indicate that some would have to have been. There's all sorts of interesting volcanic remnants around SEQ.

    The Cat on
    tmsig.jpg
  • adytumadytum The Inevitable Rise And FallRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I'm going to use this opportunity to pimp one of the best blogs that I follow, Scouting New York.

    The gentleman is a location scout in NYC and has (legal) access to all manner of buildings and locations a regular person will never be able to visit.

    The entry from today is Scouting An Abandoned Mental Asylum: A Visit To The Rockland Psychiatric Center, Part 1

    adytum on
  • valhalla130valhalla130 13 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    How about Providence Canyon, or the "Little Grand Canyon," near Lumpkin, Georgia? Basically it's a bunch of Georgia clay carved out by erosion.

    450pxprovidencecanyonspga2_1.jpg
    ProvidenceCanyon2.jpeg

    valhalla130 on
    asxcjbppb2eo.jpg
  • ACSISACSIS Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Raiju wrote: »
    That stuff about burying bodies in the Great Wall sounds like hearsay and legends used to impress tourists and/or exaggerate the cruelty of the various emperors of the time by the local populace, at least to me (or someone's been watching The Mummy 3 one too many times). If there really are bodies found buried, please prove it with cited examples from reputable sources. Until then, I call shenanigans on this myth.

    On a side note, the Eastern European bone ossuary was a location used and shot in the first Dungeons & Dragons movie (not that it helped that movie any), if I recall.

    Speaking of the First Emperor's insanity, on the non-myth way, the motherfucking Terracotta Army and the rest of his tomb deserves a mention:

    800px-Xian_museum.jpg

    800px-Terracotta_Army_Pit_1_-_2.jpg

    800px-Terracotta_pmorgan.jpg

    Thousands of soldiers, several regiments worth. Chariots, horses, weaponry, fortifications. None identical. In their heyday they were vividly painted as well.

    Pyramids are cool but...this guy took an army with him to the afterlife. Seems like he went on the conquer heaven.

    There was something else found in the Qin Shuang’s mausoleum. Swords. But these are special. The mausoleum was build 210 BC. But the swords are still sharp.

    Mr Zhang Tao, a museologist at the Museum of Terracotta Warriors notes that the swords have been heat-treated and are chromium plated. Indeed there is a very fine 10 – 15 micron rust proof chromium oxide coating on the swords and this consists of .6 – 2% chromium. Incredibly, chromium plating was not used in the West until the 1900s, although chromium was discovered in Paris in 1797.

    ACSIS on
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