194. The High House

In 2004 some developers planned a shopping complex in the Chinese municipality of Chongqing. As per normal they bought the land and swiftly evicted the 280 home owners, however they met resistance in the  form of Wu Ping and her husband, Yang Wu. The ever calm 49-year-old Wu Ping and supporting Yang Wu decided to not leave. Instead they settled down in their two-storey brick house while the land around them was scraped clean.

The developers were impatient and even began to excavate the land around the house; still, Wu Ping and Yang Wu stayed in their house. While the ground fell away from around their humble abode the developers apparently threatened the pair by sending up thugs, presumably thugs of the threatening kind. The oddity of the case and the bravado displayed meant news of the case spread far and wide. The image of a single house on a column of earth became synonymous with the struggle between citizens and property developers in an aggressively modernising China. As Wu Ping said:

“I’m not stubborn or unruly, I’m just trying to protect my personal rights as a citizen.”

Fortunately Wu Ping’s husband was more than able to help. Being a martial arts champion he threatened to beat up any authorities approaching the house. He also happened to be a practical and fairly determined individual. For simpler access to the house he cut stairs winding up the 10 muddy metres to the house. How? With the violent and thorough application of his personal nunchuks to the soft earth.

 

186. The Melted Caterpillar

by GollyGForce

For over a century scientists have been observing caterpillars engaging in strange migrations. This condition affects many different species of caterpillar, but the virus specialising in the Gypsy Moth caterpillar has a few extra surprises.

These normally nocturnal creatures would starts venturing out in broad daylight, leaving their normal grazing and reaching up into the open canopy. The change was not a choice, it was forced by an invader. The caterpillars were sick, and a virus was in control.

One single gene has been isolated in the virus which is thought to be the ‘caterpillar control,’ it deactivates the caterpillar’s will to moult, sending the caterpillar on a constant feeding cycle. Making one very hungry caterpillar.

 

175. The Great Saharan Eye

In a remote section of the Sahara Desert, Mauritania specifically, there lies this most mysterious formation, the ‘Eye of the Sahara,’ also known as the Richat Structure. Those passing over the large flat dome on the ground do not notice anything particularly out of the ordinary, but when viewed from space it stands out.

The eye of the Sahara is 50km in diameter and when viewed from above it does bear a resemblance to the human eye. Especially when one considers that it is actually a low dome, like a large eyeball peering out of the desert and gazing up into the sky. Its bizarre appearance and considerable size have led to great speculation as to how it ever came to exist. It used to be that no-one understood its formation and even now it has been extensively studied few believe that we are in possession of the truth yet. I suppose we shall have to wait, and see.

 

173. The Great Rolling Hotel and the Sahara

Subsaharan Africa is an inhospitable place at best, life maintains a tenuous grasp on that hot and arid landscape. It has long presented a great challenge to travelers, expeditionaries and nomads alike. Crossing  the Sahara even today is quite an undertaking. In 1969 humanity first set its footprints into the lunar dust, in the Shara another frontier was being broken. Overshadowed by the moon landing but still deserving of its own plaudits. For in 1969, humanity also first crossed the Sahara, in a bus. Well I say bus, really it is more than that. Not so technically advanced as the space shuttle but something equally as novel. It was ROTEL.

ROTEL is a simple concept from Germany, a hotel on wheels. Check in, tour the world then check out. To this day ROTEL still runs, operating tens of buses visiting over 150 countries. Touring from Baghdad, Bali, Scandinavia, the Arctic circle to just about any other country. For over 40 years ROTEL has provided the lazy explorer with the world. All in relative comfort, not decadence but at least from a position most unique. Where else after all, does the room itself take you to your destination?

 

169. Flying Back in Time

A small shock awaits anyone who flies from Tonga to Samoa these days.

The flight takes two hours in the air, but crosses the international date line. Meaning you arrive before you left. Therefore the flight takes a total of negative 22 hours were you to trust the watches.

 

153. Holes in the Ocean

In the shallow blue waters of the Bahamas, Belize and others people often remark upon the brightness of the water; lit by the light reflecting off of the white sand beneath. However one can find deviations from the shallow norm, underwater pits where the land drops away. Circular anomalies which suddenly drill deep down, these deeper spaces filled with darker, and decidedly chillier water. This is a ‘Blue Hole.’

Their entrances can be anything from 25 metres to 300 metres across; their darkness is a result of the depths absorbing the light. These peculiarities of the ocean reach up to, or rather down 202 metres, a lengthy vertical cave. The depth and narrowness of these vertical caves also limits their flow. At the base of the blue holes the water has lost all oxygen, making it inhospitable to anything more complex than bacteria.

 

148. A Case of Contagious Laughter

During 1962 in Tanzania, then known as Tanganyika, there was an outbreak of mass hysteria. This phenomenal outbreak is known as the ‘Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic’ – it started in school. 30 January, in a mission run boarding school for girls. During the day a group of three girls started to uncontrollably giggle, soon the laughter spread through the school haphazardly until by the end of the day 95 out of the 159 students were affected, afflicted with intermittent uncontrollable fits of laughter. The students reportedly had difficulty focusing in lessons, much to the chagrin of the teachers. The teachers who were, I may add, unaffected.

The school being a boarding school meant that the epidemic was contained, some recovered after a few hour whilst others were affected greatly for 16 days. Thanks to recurring incidents of laughter the school was forced t close in March. When the students were sent home the contagious laughter further spread. By May, 217 people had experienced the laughing fits and they even spread to another school. The boarding was opened and then closed again. 14 schools had to close due to the severity of the condition, those who came down with laughter were incapacitated for the entire duration of each fit.

 

147. The Big Bum Coconut

Fruit come in all shapes and sizes, no sizes greater however, than that of the Coco de Mer. This bizarre fruit is both rare and exotic, with more than a passing resemblance to a pair of buttocks, earning it the nickname of the ‘Bum nut’ This curiosity is only found on two islands in the Seychelles, Praslin and Cureuse. Also known as the ‘Seychelles Coconut’ it requires 7 years to mature and then another 2 to germinate.

Once it is finished with all of its growth it reaches phenomenal weights, the heaviest one weighed reached 42kg  the largest weight of any fruit ever recorded. Behind this also lies a small mythology, it’s latin name Lodoicea callipyge means in part ‘beautiful rump’ after sailors who saw the mysterious double coconut thought it resembled a pair of disembodied woman’s buttocks.Until the trees were found to be the source in 1768,  people believed their source to be a mythical tree at the bottom of the sea.                  

 

145. Death Valley’s Sailing Stones

In Death Valley, California, the stones move: nobody has figured out how. These are sailing stones. You can find them all in one area, just around the aptly name Racetrack Playa.

Here the valley is scored with flat tracks between 8 and 30cm wide, some curvaceous whilst others straight or jagged. Their marks score rarely more than 2 cm into the earth whilst their length range  from over 100 metres to and pitiful few centimetres. At the ends of each and every one, an unremarkable stone from one of the nearby towering cliffs. Without human or animal intervention the rocks have partially navigated the smooth valley floor. Bizarre.

These tracks are the cumulation of around 4 years work for each stone and its respective propulsion, whatsoever that may be. The mysterious force has been much researched but remains illusive, it makes the rough stones travel in jagged paths but lets the smooth ones wander aimlessly across the fragmented clay surface. No direction seems truly set, occasionally two adjacent rocks set out in parallel then one veers off wildly or even goes back the way it came.

The rocks are nothing special, or so it seems for the moment, the majority of the moving rocks are of the 260m high cliff nearby and made of Dolomite, a tough mineral mixture. Enthusiastically joined by some igneous rocks from the neighbouring cliffs in their wanderings of the Racetrack Playa.They weigh up to 40 kg at a time and even turn over, changing the width and structure of their paths.

This geological phenomenon is a true enigma, all suggested propulsions have been either totally wrong when tested or near negligible. The truth remains illusive.

 

144. Gone Pear Shaped

The earth is officially ‘pear-shaped’ – not a round sphere as is commonly believed. Now do not get the wrong idea about this, it is not shaped like some huge interstellar fruit, that, while interesting would be plain ridiculous. It is barely pear-shaped, but pear-shaped enough.

Let us start at the beginning. We used to think the earth was flat, in the case of the Mayans we thought it had 4 corners and was placed on the back of a giant crocodile in a lily pond which in turn was on top of five different coloured trees. Then around 2200 years ago the Greeks, specifically Eratosthenes calculated that the earth was round and even made a fairly accurate estimation of its circumference.

Then comes Columbus. As you can tell, he did not discover that the world was round, it had been known for well over 1000 years before he was even born. He in fact set out to find a new and better trading route with parts of Asia, and failed. He did however succeed in another way by correctly believing the earth was shaped like the aforementioned cosmic fruit. In fact he claimed that he didn’t discover a better trading route to Asia because of the bulging part of the pear near the stalk. To be clear the earth does not have a stalk, but it is definitely a little pear shaped.

You see, the earth is irregular, some parts are rock, some are water and others are melted rock. This means it stretches when forces are applied to it. First thing, the earth spins,the equator spinning the fastest. This means more force on the equator and causes a bulge.

That’s the reason the earth is not round, now here comes the pearification. The earth is irregular remember, so it stretches bizarrely, this means it is not an oblate spheroid or a squashed sphere. Instead the bulge is not on the equator but just south. So now you know, the earth is pear-shaped, or Piriform if you want the correct adjective.

Further Reading

• The Shape of Planet Earth – a more mathematical explanation of this concept