This cave under The Chihuahua Desert in Mexico is actually a working mine that is known for its amazing crystals. The name of the cave is Naica Mine, is located 1000ft under ground, and it was discovered by two miners that was also brothers when they were drilling into the Naica lead. The chamber of the crystals is known as Crystal Cave of Giants.

The biggest crystals weigh 55 tons and are measuring up to 36 feet long. Imagine what an incredible experience it would be to stand in the cave and experience the beauty of the crystals. One other attraction in Mexico is the Island of the Dolls, a rather dark and scary attraction.

They are blade-sharp and dangerous but awesome to look at. From the pictures you would suppose that it is icing cold in the cave, but to be honest it is about 112F, and the cavers need to bring cooled air in backpacks and be protected by special suits for the conditions.

New York City – the city of skyscrapers and never-ending possibilities., one of the most important and most popular cities in the world. Here are some old historic pictures of New York from the first half of the 20^th century. The photos are really beautiful and you will almost feel that you are a part of them just by looking at them.They are capturing great and random moments like sellers in the street, camel advertisement, Grand Central terminal, Washington Market and other different markets, and of course Central Park.

Some of the photos are from the Great Depression that hit the U.S. stock market in 1929. At last it caused economic growth that is also to be shown in these black and white photographs. If you want to enjoy more photographs of New York, you should check out these vintage photos of the city taken between 1920 and 1960.

Via SmashingUsa.

We have all seen glowing stars on the sky at night, but what about seeing stars under the ground? You get the chance to do that in the Waitomo Glowworm Cave on the North Island of New Zealand. Of course the “stars” are not real; they are glowing worms that is hanging from the ceilings in the cave.

The worms are only to be found in New Zealand, and they are as tiny as an average mosquito. The lightning from the worms are the only remedy boats with tourist are having when they cruise around on the Waitomo River underground to see the mysterious glowworms.

A group of specialists are monitoring the quality of the air and the temperature to know how to manage the cave and how many tourists are allowed to visit the cave each time, so don’t worry, if you want to visit the cave and enjoy the sight of “glowing stars”, you are definitely in good hands.

Before Nintendo, Playstation and X-box existed, children, especially boys, were playing with construction toys. Some of them that were the most popular are The Erector Set (change the name to Meccano) that was first produced in 1913. The toy had a whole collection of screws, bolts, metal beams, nuts, gears, and even electric motors. Other famous construction toys were Girder and Panel building sets of Kenner Products and were introduced in 1957. They were one of the first to advertise their product on television.

Other famous building sets were the Bridge and Turnpike Building Set from 1958, Skyrail from 1963, Hydro-Dynamic from 1964 and Bayko from 1967. Maybe you’ll recognize some of the toys, maybe you won’t, but it’s still a shame that they no longer exist today. Something that is still popular as it was in the 40’s are Lego, and to honor these genius toy building bricks, Legoland has been built in California.

Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Today almost no one gets impressed by photomontages, and we can all thank Photoshop for that. A lot of people can already use that photo program and it is just not so shocking to see a montage anymore unless it looks super realistic. But something that is impressing are these photomontages were made and published in 1979 by Tsunehisa Kumura who surprised everyone at that time and is still surprising today because Photoshop didn’t exist back then. It really is weird how he managed to create those montages, especially the huge mass of water falling down on city buildings.

The Japanese artist gets inspiration from urban settings, buildings and constructions in a mix with natural phenomena, and it can surely be seen in his works. The set of his photomontages is called Visual Scandals. Another illustrator has made photomontages of superheroes and old World War II photos, but he used Photoshop.

Via BLDBLOG.

Probably the world’s largest scale model of a city is this one of Shangai, and is to be found in the Shangai Urban Planning Museum on the third floor. Shangai is China’s most populated city, and one of the country’s most important cities, also known as the “Pars of the East”. It serves as cultural, commercial, financial and industrial center of China, and is one of the busiest ports in the world, and it’s only growing bigger and bigger.

The model that has been built covers over 100 square meters and is actually a vision of what Shangai will look like in year 2020. The detailed work is really something to check out if you’re ever visiting this busy city. Another fun object that you can find in China is the Water World resort in Songjiang.

The Bahamas – known for its tropical islands, miles upon miles of sandy beaches, clear warm water and coral reefs. But it hides a little secret called the “blue holes” that are located under the water and look like beautiful blue vertical caves. Bahamas has quite a few blue holes that make up a whole underwater cave system. From the sky they look scary like dark blue holes in the ocean, and they are dangerous, so only professional divers can experience it. Still there is not much to see because there is almost no sea life there because of the poor water circulation. This also causes a large number of bacteria developing.

The deepest blue hole is located in Bahamas and is 202 meters deep (663 ft.) and is called Dean’s Blue Hole. Looking at the pictures the blue holes look like a fantasy underworld where the colors are beautifully mixed up. Too bad only professionals can explore it and enjoy the beauty of the blue underwater caves. Other beauties of the underwater that everyone can visit are the fabulous Red Sea Star restaurant in Israel, located 6 meters under the sea.

Via National Geographic.

Most people do fear these little creatures called spiders even if some of them are harmful. Still there are several that are dangerous, and one of them is the hobo spider from North America, also known as Tegenaria Agrestis, that belongs to the group of funnel web spiders. What’s special about this kind of spiders is that they create a funnel-shaped silky web and then they will wait at the end of it for other insects to get stuck into their trap. The danger of this spider is that its bite will cause serious local wounds and pain, and this will further cause to tissue death in the areas of the bite. In these pictures you can see how the wound is developing after the spider bite.

The ironic thing is that hobo spiders try to avoid contact with humans because they’re afraid, but still people get bit because the spiders are to be found around human habitations, and they can accidentally get crushed by parts of the human body.

Most people have heard about the legend and genius Nikola Tesla. Some of the things he invented were X-ray, the radio, microwave oven, electron microscope, neon lights, speedometer, and he was the first to design the hydro-electric power plant in Niagara Falls. A lot of his inventions were unfortunately credited by others, and his biggest competitor Thomas Edison did everything to erase him from the history books. The ideas that Tesla came up with became to a point so extreme that people laughed at his theories and called him a lunatic. Thanks to this “crazy scientist” people are doing weird stuff with electricity because of his inventions.

These pictures represent some of these works where people have literally played with electricity. It looks dangerous and it surely is, you don’t want to stand in the middle of the purple electric lightning. Tesla most amazing theory was that he predicted that Internet would be invented someday where voice and images are transported through the air. He was so obsessed with his work that it’s claimed he only slept for 2-3 hours at night. If you find science interesting you should check out the top 10 mad scientists in history.

Most lovable robot from Star Wars series, a R2-D2 (Artoo or R2 for short) can be turned into a awesome PC mod case. This PC case mod is made for “Science Fiction Case Mod Contest” by Frenki Janse . Best part about it was that the budget for this was low and Frenki spent only $120 in making this case. He said he got inspiration when he saw a R2-D2 Pepsi coolers on the gas station, he was not amazed how they were made, so he decided to make a great PC case mod. R2-D2 PC doesn’t make noises, and contains web cams, fan control and blue lighted feet. R2-D2 was played by actor Kenny Baker in 5 of the 6 Star Wars movies, (but he was credited with appearing in “Revenge of the Sith”, even if he never filmed any scene of that movie) with many scenes recorded using mechanical and CGI techniques.

For all hardware “geeks” out there, these are the components of this PC case: P4 3.2Ghz w/HT @ 3.71Ghz , 2GB (4 x 512MB) of DDR400, 120GB Hard drive, Radeon 9800XT 256MB, Creative 7.1 surround sound, Asetek Vapochill Phase Change cooling @ -38C.

Aquariums have always been a popular item, whether it’s for decoration or just for “pet purposes”. They are to be found in apartments, restaurants, hotels, malls and several other places, they are joyful and pretty to the eye, and come mostly in a square shape, but there are exceptions. This guy who owns a café has made a pipeline fish tank through the whole location connecting two big aquariums. Imagine yourself coming in there to take a coffee or maybe sit down and read the news paper, and a fish swims above your head, almost like they are flying. It’s unusual but really creative and interesting interior.

The fishes are swimming through the pipes to change their location if they get bored of the same aquarium.  Either way they need to get to one of the aquariums to get some food. Speaking of fishes, this is the most dangerous fish to eat, the Fugu fish from Japan.

They are not alive and they cannot attack you but still they are scary as hell and amazing to observe. The backbone of the snakes is made up of many vertebrae attached to ribs. Humans have around 24 ribs and 33 vertebrae but snakes can have from 100 up to 400 vertebrae with many ribs attached, so imagine the difference. That is what makes these legless creatures so flexible and easy to move! The snake’s bones have a very complex structure with many joins so snake can swallow much bigger objects than its own head. Most snakes can be d into 4 groups based on their jaws, Aglyphous snakes (with similar sized teeth), Opisthoglyphous snakes (with a pair of 2 big teeth) , Proteroglyphous snakes ( with few short teeth ) and Solenoglyphous snakes (with pair of 2 fangs).

Over 3000 snake species can be found around the world. Giant ones like the 23 feet long pythons can squeeze the life out of a large antelope, smaller hypo or kangaroo and swallow it whole king Cobra can kill smaller elephant. Other snakes grow no longer than a pencil. In captivity, some snake species can live as long as 50 years.

Hyungkoo Lee has come up with the idea to represent famous cartoon characters as skeletons. He wanted to figure out how the anatomy of the cartoons would look like if they were alive, and the materials used to manage to create this are some synthetic materials and surprisingly enough real animal bones. He called his project “Animatus” and the cartoon characters used are Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Tom & Jerry, Road Runner, etc.

The skeletons are photographed with a black background to express the white in the bones even more, and the models look like they are in motion so that the skeleton cartoons will appear more alive. Some will say that they look kind of creepy while others will think they are kind of cute, especially the models representing Huey, Dewey and Louie. Something that reminds of this work is the pin-up calendar that features x-ray photos of women bodies, so it looks like skeletons are posing

The endless steps on the walls seen in these pictures are big water reservoirs that go by many names like Baoli, Baori, Baudi, and so on, but are most known as India’s stepwells. It looks like the steps are made for other purposes than practical reasons, but that is not the case. The steps give rather efficient use of the water as they access the stored water, but they also work as a great and easy maintenance of the well.

Now people in India are coming to the steps on hot summer days to cool down in the shadows. It is said that the stepwells are more than 800 years old, and there have been several arguments about that, but most people believe that they can’t be that old after all. Another interesting fact about the wells is that they may have been used to holy baths and rituals because they are built right next to old temples. Today they are no longer in use, because they have been replaced by new systems.

This interesting work of art is actually old photos superimposed on present day scenes. It shows how it was back in the days and how it is now. The brains behind the project are several photographers from a flickr group who have managed to cooperate and create an amusing art piece by only using photography as the main tool. There are some very cool transformations and you will be surprised how different it looked before. A transformation that is especially fun to check out is the one on Dubai. If you want to do the same as these members of the group did, you need lots of time, a bunch of old photographs of buildings, structures and locations,  a photo camera, and last but not least creativity. It can make an interesting hobby.

The flickr group contains several hundreds of photos, but here are the best 25. Something that can remind of this project is these amazing drawings combined with photography.

This artwork is based on the world known 2009 Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds with actors such as Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. The movie’s production team came up with the idea to cooperate with Upper Playground and create these different illustrations that’s representing the movie. Inglourious Basterds has won several prices including the Golden Globe, BAFTA award and Best Actor Award. The film was planned in 1998, but Tarantino couldn’t find the perfect ending so he worked with other projects while getting inspiration and finishing it in 2008.

It was filmed in Germany with a production budget of $70 million, but still it earned a lot more, over $320 million. The images are all made by illustrators like Alex Pardee, David Choe and Sam Flores among others. They are really giving that raw impression and mood that the movie gives, because of the blood and the grotesque scenes. Illustrations have also been the work of an Italian cartoonist who has illustrated how superheroes would look like when they get old.

Words like Stalin, Cold War, Communism and KGB reminds of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR, also known as the Soviet Union. This higly centralized state was the former Russian Empire in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991. With a lot of power, the USSR was an empire with growth and opportunities. These pictures are a collection that shows how the situation in USSR was for the past 30 years. You will notice that the pictures in the beginning are full of joy and brightness; children playing, people dancing and working with smiles on their faces, school children singing, etc.

The further down you come, the more depressing and tragic they get, showing soldiers, hungry people and poverty. Maybe the tragic ending is a result of the dissolution or maybe the vodka is to blame. A similar situation to this is the story of Afghanistan, showing how 30 years of war destroyed their welfare and hope of the 60’s.

Via Trinixy.

Being an avid Star Wars fan, Travis S. has build an electric guitar that looks like Han Solo’s starship from the movies. With a huge passion for both guitars and Star Wars, Travis used a month to create his little piece of art by using a vintage Millennium Falcon toy. He claimed that he would have get done in a week since he only was building in the weekends. This was a piece of cake for Travis because he had built guitars with his father in high school. The Star Wars guitar is created to play as the plastic body does not affect the sound.

To give the piece and extra touch Travis has decorated it with LED lights containing their own batteries. He also had to install a maple block through the whole ship so the tension from the strings wouldn’t break it. Speaking of Star Wars starship, this Star Wars fan created a bed that looks like Millennium Falcon.

Via URLesque.

We have all heard about origami – the traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding. It’s super popular in Japan and it has spread around the whole world, and evolved into a modern art form. The folds in origami are basic and there are not many, but there are several forms of origami and several things you can make out of this small number of folds. One of them is origami architecture that involves using cut-out and folded paper, as thin paperboard. The three-dimensional are the hardest ones, and require skills of an architect.

These pictures are showing some of the great works of origami architecture where some of the papers are opened 360^o that involves the hardest folding. Just imagine how many prototypes had to be made before they managed to create the perfect origami building.

Sleeping Beauty Castle is beautiful fairy-tale building which original version can be seen in Disneyland park in Hong Kong. Originally, the design is based on Neuschwanstein Castle which can be found in Bavaria, in Germany. Some versions of Sleeping Beauty Castle can be also seen in Disneyland in USA, Disneyland Paris and Disneyland Tokyo.

This LEGO replica of Sleeping Beauty Castle is pretty magnificent creation. Here you can see some photos of thit beautiful replica made completely from LEGO bricks. It was posted by Brickshelf user Grrandram.

We do not own information about the number of LEGO bricks which were used for construction of this colorful replica but we are pretty sure that it wasn’t easy at all to create this.

Via grrandram.