Ryugyong Hotel

The Ryugyong Hotel is an unfinished concrete skyscraper. It is intended for use as a hotel in Sojang-dong, in the Potong-gang District of Pyongyang, North Korea. The hotel's name comes from one of the historic names for Pyongyang: Ryugyong, or "capital of willows." Its 105 stories rise to a height of 330 m (1,083 ft), and it contains 360,000 m² (3.9 million square feet) of floor space, making it the most prominent feature of the city’s skyline and by far the largest structure in the country. At one time, it would have been the world's tallest hotel.Esquire dubbed it "The Worst Building in the History of Mankind" and noted that the government of North Korea has airbrushed the building out of pictures. The Christian Science Monitor called it "one of the most expensive white elephants in history" Over the years, the skyscraper has earned such nicknames as the "Hotel of Doom," "Phantom Hotel," and "Phantom Pyramid." Construction began in 1987 and ceased in 1992, due to the government's financial difficulties. The unfinished hotel remained untouched until April 2008, when construction resumed after being inactive 16 years.


Recent Development -

The basic structure is complete, but no windows, fixtures, or fittings were installed when construction came to a halt in 1992, and it has never been certified safe for occupancy. The concrete originally used to build the hotel was of substandard quality, and at one point, according to ABC News, it was actually crumbling.The hotel is so massive that it is clearly visible from nearly everywhere in the city, but it is nearly impossible to get anyone to talk about it. It is often seen as a metaphor of the highly secretive nature of North Korea. Former CNN reporter Mike Chinoy likened it to the giant calcium deposit on the neck of late dictator Kim Il-sung. Like the Ryugyong, the growth was clearly visible despite official attempts to hide it from view. Esquire called the hotel a colossal economic failure, likening it to what would have happened had Chicago's John Hancock Center been left unfinished with no prospect of being completed.

After 16 years of inactivity, foreign residents in Pyongyang noted that Egypt's Orascom Group started refurbishing the top floors of the hotel in April 2008. Though the effect on the architecture has yet to be determined, windows and telecommunications antennae were observed being installed. The Orascom Telecom subsidiary of the group confirmed involvement in the structure to begin developing GSM infrastructure in North Korea for up to 100,000 initial subscribers. Only government officials are presently permitted to use mobile phones and the service has been banned from use by ordinary citizens and foreigners since 2002.

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

Truth or Consequences is a spa city in and the county seat of Sierra County, New Mexico, United States.[1] As of the 2000 census, the population was 7,289. It is commonly known within New Mexico as T or C.

Originally called "Hot Springs", it took the name of a popular radio program in 1950, when Truth or Consequences host Ralph Edwards announced that he would do the program from the first town that renamed itself after the show. Ralph Edwards came to the town during the first weekend of May for the next fifty years. This event was called the "Fiesta" and included a beauty contest, a parade, and a stage show.

Wedge (Border)

The Wedge (or Delaware Wedge) is a small tract of land along the border between Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Well-intentioned efforts to precisely define colonial boundaries inadvertently created this geopolitical anomaly. This was due, primarily, to the shortcomings of contemporary surveying techniques and the resulting geographical vagaries. It is bounded on the north by an eastern extension of the east-west portion of the Mason-Dixon Line, on the west by the north-south portion of the Mason-Dixon line, and on the southeast by the New Castle, Delaware Twelve-Mile Circle. Ownership of this land was in dispute until 1921, when Delaware's ownership was confirmed by Pennsylvania. The town of Mechanicsville, Delaware, lies within the area today.

Here is the wedge labelled in Google maps - Click here

That's it basically. If you want to read more about this place - it's history - read below.

Even though the area of the Wedge is quite small, just over one square mile (3 km²), to understand its significance requires some background of the colonial history of the Province of Maryland, the Delaware Colony, and the Province of Pennsylvania.

The original 1632 charter for Maryland gave the Calverts what is now called the Delmarva Peninsula above the latitude of Watkins Point up to the 40th parallel. A small Dutch settlement, Zwaanendael (1631-1632), was within their territory, as were other later New Sweden and New Netherland settlements along the Delaware Bay and Delaware River. Although the Calverts publicly stated that they wanted the settlements removed, because of the foreign policy implications for the Crown, they did not personally confront them militarily.

In 1664, the Duke of York, brother of King Charles II, removed foreign authority over these settlements, but in the process the Crown eventually decided that the area around New Castle and land below it on the Delaware Bay should be separated from Maryland and administered as a new colony.

In 1681, William Penn received his charter for Pennsylvania. This charter granted him land west of the Delaware River, and north of the 40th parallel. However, any land within 12 miles of New Castle was excluded from Pennsylvania. This demonstrates how poorly charted this area was, as New Castle is actually about 25 miles (40 km) south of the 40th parallel. The Penns later acquired the New Castle lands from the Duke of York, which they called the Three Lower Counties and are now known as Delaware. Delaware, however, remained a distinct possession from Pennsylvania.

The exact, and even approximate, boundaries of these three colonies remained in considerable dispute for the next eighty years. After settling Philadelphia and the surrounding area, the Penns discovered that it was actually below the 40th parallel, and tried to make claims to the land south of Philadelphia. The Calverts had failed to confirm their hold on their grant, either by surveying it or by establishing loyal settlers. The main progress through the 1750s was to survey the famous Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle as the northern and western boundary of Delaware, and to establish the Transpeninsular Line as its southern border. A decision was also reached between the Calverts and Penns that the boundary between their respective possessions would be:

1. The Transpeninsular Line from the Atlantic Ocean to its mid-point to the Chesapeake Bay. According to NOAA, the Middle Point monument is at: (NAD27) 382735.8698 N / 754138.4554 W or (NAD83(91)) 382736.29213 N / 754137.18951 W. The monument is a short distance east of Route 50 near Mardela Springs, MD.
2. A "Tangent Line" from the mid-point of the Transpeninsular Line to the western side of the Twelve-Mile Circle.
3. A "North Line" from the tangent point to a line running 15 miles south of Philadelphia (approximately 39° 43' N latitude).
4. The parallel at 39° 43' N was reached as a compromise to the 40th parallel.
5. Should any land within the Twelve-Mile Circle fall west of the North Line, it would remain part of Delaware. (This indeed was the case, and this segment is known as the "Arc Line.")

When this was agreed upon, no one knew what the final shape would really be. Mostly due to the difficulty of surveying the Twelve-Mile Circle tangent point and the Tangent Line, astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon were hired. This complex border became known as the Mason-Dixon Line. It turned out that there is a small "wedge" of land between 39° 43' N latitude, the Twelve-Mile Circle, and the North Line. The top is roughly ¾ mile (1.2 km), and the side is roughly 3 miles (5 km) long. Clearly Maryland no longer had a claim to the Wedge, as it is east of the Mason-Dixon Line. And because both Pennsylvania and Delaware were owned by the Penns, there was no particular incentive to determine which possession it was a part of, at least until they became separate states.

* Pennsylvania claimed the Wedge because it was beyond the Twelve-Mile Circle and past the Maryland side of the Mason-Dixon Line, therefore neither part of Maryland or Delaware. So by default it should be part of Pennsylvania.
* Delaware claimed the Wedge because it was never intended that Pennsylvania should go below the northern border of Maryland (which originally ran at 40° N all the way to the Delaware River). The North Line is logically an extension of the Tangent Line and therefore should separate Maryland and Delaware. Even though the Wedge is outside the Twelve-Mile Circle, because it is south of the 39° 43' N compromise line, it should not be part of Pennsylvania.

Mason and Dixon actually began surveying the Maryland-Pennsylvania border line at the Delaware River, or at least fixed the longitude of the intersection of 39° 43' N and the river. Even though this point is within the Twelve Mile Circle, the western boundary of Pennsylvania was to be five degrees of longitude west of it, and Mason and Dixon were to survey the Maryland line to Pennsylvania's western border.

By simple merits of the geometry, the Wedge more logically fit as a part of Delaware, which exercised jurisdiction of the area. In 1849, Lt. Col. J. D. Graham of the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, resurveyed the northeast corner of Maryland and the Twelve-Mile Circle. This survey reminded Pennsylvania of the issue and they once again claimed the Wedge. Delaware ignored the claim. In 1892, W.C. Hodgkins of the Office of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey monumented an eastward extension of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, and created the "Top of The Wedge Line." In 1921 both states settled on this boundary.

Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein

Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein is Afrikaans for, literally, "Two buffaloes shot dead using one shot fountain", which follows a common format for place names in South Africa.

According to one Professor AM de Lange (of the University of Pretoria), it is the name of a farm about 200 km west of Pretoria officially registered with the Surveyor General. The name has also been used in advertising to signify the typical small rural town.

While not strictly grammatically legal, this name also illustrates the compounding nature of Afrikaans: all the descriptive terms relating to one concept can generally be tied together into one long word: properly separated, it can be rewritten as "twee buffels met een skoot mors dood geskiet fontein". Another example of this would be wildewaatlemoenkonfytkompetisiebeoordelaarshandleiding, which translates to "wild watermelon jam competition judge's manual". Such use is, however, not common, and it is generally agreed that words should be separated using one or more hyphens if they become too long or unwieldy.

Anton Goosen, a South African singer, has performed a song with this title, which was written by Fanus Rautenbach.

Aerican Empire

Flag of the Aegian Empire.

The Aerican Empire is an imaginative micronation founded in May 1987. It has no sovereign territory of its own and has never been recognized by any other sovereign state as existing.

The current land claims include:

• Chompsville: A square kilometer of territory in Australia near the region of Springvale, Victoria
• Earth: A house-sized area in Montreal, Canada containing the Imperial capital and the site of the Aerican Embassy to Everything Else
• Mars Colony: Approximately 720 acres (2.9 km²) of the surface of the planet Mars at coordinates 10-11 degrees South by 220-221 degrees East 
• Northern Plutopia: The northern half of the dwarf planet Pluto
• Parrwater: A water reservoir near Castor, Alberta
• Psyche: Adjacent to Chompsville and covering the city of Dandenong
• Retsaot Island: An island in the region of Ashburton, New Zealand
• The Pasture: An ill-defined cow pasture located somewhere in the American midwest
• Verden: The only wholly-invented claim, a non-existent planet.

All of the Empire's claimed territories on Earth are currently controlled by other sovereign nations, and the extraterrestrial colonies are uninhabited.

As with most micronations, the Empire's population has fluctuated wildly with time. In March 2008, the Empire's population exceeded 280 citizens.

The Aerican Empire was founded on 8 May 1987 by Eric Lis, the current Emperor, and a core group of friends. The first ten years of the Empire's history were filled with wars, including battles with rival micronations. During this period, the Empire was almost wholly fictional, incorporating a vast galaxy of planets under its nationality^. It was not until the signing of the Aerican Constitution that the micronation pledged only to use war as a last option.

In 2000, the first growth spurt in the Empire's population was triggered by an article in the New York Times. In the months following this, the Empire's membership rose to over five hundred people. This number slowly fell over the following years as members left, eventually stabilizing and rising again with time. The Empire's modern philosophy is summed up in its mission statement: "The Empire exists to facilitate the evolution of a society wherein the Empire itself is no longer necessary."

Baarle-Nassau

The above image shows the boundary between Netherlands and Belgium.

Baarle-Nassau is a municipality and a town in the southern Netherlands.
It is closely linked, with complicated borders, to the Belgian exclaves of Baarle-Hertog. Baarle-Hertog consists of 26 separate pieces of land. Apart from the main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian town of Merksplas, there are 22 Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also seven Dutch exclaves located within the Belgian exclaves. Six of them are located in the largest one and a seventh in the second-largest one. An eighth Dutch exclave lies in Zondereigen. The smallest enclave, H22, measures 2,632 square metres.
The complex border situation is a result of a number of equally complex medieval treaties, agreements, land-swaps and sales between the Lords of Breda and the Dukes of Brabant. Generally speaking, predominantly agricultural or built environments became constituents of Brabant, other parts devolved to Breda. These distributions were ratified and clarified as a part of the borderline settlements arrived at during the Treaty of Maastricht in 1843.

Avenue Road

Avenue Road is a major north-south street in Toronto, Ontario. The road is a continuation of University Avenue, linked to it via Queen's Park and Queen's Park Circle East and West to form a single through route[1] which was formerly Highway 11A.
Avenue Road, the western limit of the former town of Yorkville, officially begins at Bloor Street and ends just north of Highway 401. At its southern terminus, it runs between two of Toronto's major hotels, the Park Hyatt (on the northwest corner of Bloor and Avenue Road) and the Four Seasons Hotel. On the northeast corner of the intersection with Bloor is the Church of the Redeemer. For much of its length the road is fairly residential, with a mix of small businesses, as well as a few large schools and churches. A notable site along this "lower section" is the Hare Krishna Temple, formerly the Avenue Road Church, opposite Dupont Street and across the street from the Anglican Church of the Messiah. Just north of St. Clair Avenue, Avenue Road is interrupted by Upper Canada College, ending at Lonsdale Road and resuming again at Kilbarry Road. The primary traffic route runs east of the school, following widened sections of Lonsdale Road and Oriole Parkway and returning to Avenue Road via Oxton Avenue. (The short section of Avenue Road from Kilbarry to Oxton is an ordinary two-lane side street.).[1]
North of Eglinton Avenue, the former St. James-Bond Church can be seen. This building, once housing two prime downtown congregations – St. James Square (formerly Presbyterian), and Bond Street (formerly Congregationalist) – was built in the late 1920s, and closed in June 2005. It has since been demolished. Near Lawrence Avenue is Havergal College, a large, private girl's school. Although in the former city of North York, much of the area considers itself part of North Toronto.
Avenue Road ends at Bombay Avenue, just after crossing Highway 401 (exit 367).[1] Originally Avenue Road continued from what is now the interchange by angling northeast via the Hogg's Hollow Bridge (across the Don River West Branch) to end at Yonge Street; this section of the road was incorporated into Highway 401 when it was constructed in the 1950s.
A few miles north of Toronto's Avenue Road, there is a separate Avenue Road in Richmond Hill, running almost due north of the Toronto one.

Arbre du Ténéré

L'Arbre du Ténéré, known in English as the Tree of Ténéré, was a solitary acacia, of either Acacia raddiana or Acacia tortilus, that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth — the only one within more than 400 km. It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara in northeast Niger — so well known that it is the only tree to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. It was located at approximately 17°45′00″N 10°04′00″E.
It was the last surviving tree of a group of trees that grew when the desert was less parched than it is today. The tree had stood alone for decades. During the winter of 1938–1939 a well was dug near the tree and it was found that the roots of the tree reached the water table 33–36 meters below the surface.

Commander of the A.M.M., Michel Lesourd, of the Service central des affaires sahariennes [Central service of Saharan affairs], saw the tree on May 21, 1939:

One must see the Tree to believe its existence. What is its secret? How can it still be living in spite of the multitudes of camels which trample at its sides. How at each azalai does not a lost camel eat its leaves and thorns? Why don't the numerous Touareg leading the salt caravans cut its branches to make fires to brew their tea? The only answer is that the tree is taboo and considered as such by the caravaniers.

There is a kind of superstition, a tribal order which is always respected. Each year the azalai gather round the Tree before facing the crossing of the Ténéré. The Acacia has become a living lighthouse; it is the first or the last landmark for the azalai leaving Agadez for Bilma, or returning.

The tree was knocked down by an allegedly drunk Libyan truck driver in 1973. On November 8, 1973 the dead tree was relocated to the Niger National Museum in the capital Niamey. It has been replaced by a simple metal sculpture representing a tree.

This was not the tree's first encounter with a truck. In his book L'épopée du Ténéré, French ethnologist and explorer Henri Lhote described his two journeys to the Tree of Ténéré. His first visit was in 1934 on the occasion of the first automobile liaison between Djanet and Agadez. He describes the tree as "an Acacia with a degenerative trunk, sick or ill in aspect. Nevertheless, the tree has nice green leaves, and some yellow flowers". He visited it again twenty-five years later, on November 26, 1959 with the Berliet-Ténéré mission, but found that it had been badly damaged after a vehicle had collided with it:

Before, this tree was green and with flowers; now it is a colourless thorn tree and naked. I cannot recognise it — it had two very distinct trunks. Now there is only one, with a stump on the side, slashed, rather than cut a metre from the soil. What has happened to this unhappy tree? Simply, a lorry going to Bilma has struck it... but it has enough space to avoid it... the taboo, sacred tree, the one which no nomad here would have dared to have hurt with his hand... this tree has been the victim of a mechanic..

Mojave phone booth

The Mojave phone booth was a lone telephone booth placed circa 1960 in the Mojave National Preserve which attracted an online following in 1997 due to its unusual location. The booth was 15 miles (24 km) from the nearest interstate highway, and miles from any buildings. Its phone number was originally +1-714-733-9969, before the area code changed to 619 and then to 760. (760, now 733, was/is the Baker, California rate center.)

Fans called the booth attempting to get a reply, and a few took trips to the booth to answer, often camping out at the site. Several callers kept recordings of their conversations. Over time, the booth became covered in graffiti, as many travelers would leave a message on it.

One incident involving the phone booth was documented by Los Angeles Times writer John Glionna, who met 51-year-old Rick Karr there. Karr claims he was instructed by the Holy Spirit to answer the phone. He spent 32 days there, answering more than 500 phone calls including repeated calls from someone who identified himself as "Sergeant Zeno from the Pentagon."

The booth was removed on May 17, 2000 by Pacific Bell, at the request of the National Park Service. Also, per Pacific Bell policy, the phone number was permanently retired. Officially, this was done to halt the environmental impact of visitors, though a letter written by the then-superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve mentions confronting Pacific Bell with some long-forgotten easement fees. A headstone-like plaque was later placed at the site. It, too, was removed by the National Park Service.

Fans of the booth also claim that the actual enclosure was destroyed by Pacific Bell after its removal.

The story inspired the creation of a motion picture, Mojave Phone Booth.
There is also a documentary short called Mojave Mirage, which can be found in the Full Frame DVD collection of documentary shorts.