PlanetOddity.com » Places

The Perfect 1960′s American Town

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:16:13 +0000

An typical American town from the 1960′s, untouched like it has frozen in time. How is that even possible? Well, at first glance this looks like a real town with all the Chevys parked around, the cinema, the toy stores and all the dining places. It’s like entering a movie scene, but where are the people?

You will maybe be disappointed when you hear that this is a miniature town built by Michael Paul Smith. He has called this little kingdom Elgin Park, and it’s a mental combination of memory and fiction brought to life by this great artist.

The photos he takes of his little town look freakishly real. He has even brought some rain to one of the scenes, and with the lights and all it just looks like reality. This is a proof that camera or photos can lie.

Photos of Elgin Park has been launched in a book that you can buy on Amazon. Speaking of miniature models, take a look at the world’s smallest aquarium with baby fish swimming around.

Puzzlewood – Tolkien’s Major Inspiration For LOTR

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:07:31 +0000

Puzzlewood is an ancient woodland site in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England. It has become a popular location for filming, and as you may know, J.R.R. Tolkien has used this woodland as inspiration for Lord of the Rings.

Only he has called it Middle-Earth. This place is so magical that you would really think there are elves, wizards and hobbits there. When it comes to geology, Puzzlewood is full of scowles, and it has an amazing cave system.

It also include ancient trees and a confusing maze of paths. The owner of this woodland laid down a mile of pathways to provide access to the woods, but today it’s a tourist attraction.

Though Tolkien never used Puzzlewood as a movie locations, other BBC TV shows have, like Merlin, “The Labyrinth of Gedref” and “The Nightmare Begins”. Not far away you can find Hobbit-looking homes in Wales.

Via Flickr.

The Crannog of Loch Tay

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:42:34 +0000

The definition of a crannog has to be “artificial island, usually built in lakes, rivers and estuarine waters”. They have been variously interpreted as free-standing wooden structures, as at Loch Tay. The word “crannog” is from Old Irish and means young tree.

They were made to protect the more wealthy families of a population. Scotland has now 400 crannogs, but Ireland still holds the record with over a thousand of them. Besides being used by wealthy families, the crannogs have also served as non residential hunting and fishing stations, and holiday homes.

Now they have reconstructed a crannog on Loch Tay in Scotland, and it’s open to visitors everyday day from Easter to October. A team of archaeologists from Edinburgh University has given us a good picture of how the people lived in crannogs, so you can learn a lot by visiting it.

Speaking of floating residents, here you have the floating island of Lake Titicaca where people actually live.

Stunning Aeiral Map Of Twitter And Flickr Users Activity Around The Globe

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:54:38 +0000

Without reading any kind of description you would believe that these maps are showing the continents at night, but that is not the case. The lights are in red/orange, blue and white, and they are showing Twitter and Flickr activity. Pretty crazy, right? So you can easily see who is the most active of the states in U.S. and the countries in Europe.

The blue lights stand for tweets, the red/yellow ones for Flickr pictures, and the white for locations that have been posted to on both Twitter and Flickr, like an overall activity.

As you may see, there are some crazy activity in London, which can be seen detailed in one of the photos. While Twitter is going nuts in the United States. This is the work of Eric Fischer that has combined data from geotagged photos from Flickr and geotagged posts on the network Twitter, and this is what you get. He thought that it was best to show these two continents because the Internet usage is most prolific. Fantastic idea and great photos, we definitely like it.

Amsterdam

Bangkok

Berlin

Buenos Aires

Chicago

Istanbul

Jakarta

Kuala Lumpur

London

Madrid

Moscow

New York

Paris

Rio De Janeiro

Rome

Seoul

Singapore

Sydney

Tokyo

Toronto

The Hills We Wish Were Full Of Chocolate

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:18:18 +0000

The hills of Bohol province in the Philippines has nothing to do with chocolate, but still they are called the Chocolate hills. Disappointing, but true. We know you would all like to visit a chocolate heaven.

These hills got the name because during the summer times, the green grass turns into a chocolate brown color. The largest hill rises almost 400 feet, but they tend to be from 100 to 160 feet high.

Some say that the hills were named after the Hershey confection known as Chocolate Kisses, but the hills have probably been there a lot longer than the confection. There are a lot of myths connected to this place.

One beautiful story says that a giant fell in love with a mortal girl, and the day she died he couldn’t stop crying. When his tears dried the Chocolate Hills were made.

Today the hills are a major tourist attraction. It’s so popular that the national government has chosen the Chocolate Hills as one of its “flagship tourist destinations”. Speaking of beautiful but weird nature, take a look at this white and undiscovered desert in Egypt.

Storseisundet Bridge Of Norway Leads You To The Edge

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:38:13 +0000

They call it the drunk bridge or the bridge to nowhere, but it’s just the Storseisundet Bridge in Norway. It is a part of the “Atlanterhavsveien” which means Atlantic Ocean Road. A lot of tourists actually come here to see this crazy bridge, because it’s really something to see. It’s still a mystery why the bridge is built like that, but you get dizzy just by looking at it.

The Storseisundet Bridge is the longest of eight other bridges in that area, and definitely the weirdest one. It’s construction is supposed to go out horizontally, but that obviously failed. And the fun thing is that it’s different from several angles, which makes it so special.

From one angle it looks like the bridge has no end at all. If you decide to see this wonder you have to be really careful when driving over it, because it can trick you easily, and you don’t want to end up in the water, would you? But it’s better that a bridge is drunk rather than dangerous, like this one.

The Incredible Volga Delta

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 01:47:05 +0000

You will maybe recognize the river on these photos or maybe you’re not familiar with it. It’s the Volga Delta, the largest river delta in Europe. It drains into the Caspian Sea in Russia’s Astrakhan Oblast. During the past century Volga has grown because of level changes, but it’s still an amazing river delta. It has played a big role in Russian culture, and it still does.

When seeing the pictures you can notice how huge it is, and that is looks like a big network of little rivers, and there are round canes everywhere. As you can see there are no population or anything, maybe you’ll just spot a few fishermen here and there.

The area is so wide that most of it is desolated, just like a lot of other territories in Russia. But it is the only place in Russia where flamingos, pelicans and lotuses may be found.

The Volga Delta has been protected since the 1900s by a Russian nature preserves named “Astrakhan Nature Reserve”. Other beautiful rivers are these two that are actually meeting each other at some point and making a beautiful nature phenomenon.

Photos Via Sergey Dolya.

Beautiful Parts of West Siberia We Didn’t Know About

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:06:42 +0000

Photography with an “above-view” has always been popular. Here we have a selection of those kinds of photos of The Novosibirsk region which is a part of the West Siberian Plain. It’s a huge area that’s about 178,2 thousand square kilometres. It’s mainly plain but in north there are some huge woodland with lots of marshes.

There are two main rivers of this “oblast” (Russian for region) , the Ob and Om, and the biggest lakes are Chani, Sartlan, Ubinskoye, some with salt water which looks completely white. They all make wonderful nature that can be seen on the photos.

The region has a continental climate, -19C in winter and 19C in summer. Animals can also be spotted in the photos, but the green vegetation is stunning. You may also notice the border with Kazakhstan.

There are also some population here and there, and some farmlands. All in all a beautiful but forgotten part of this world. This lovely Siberian nature has been used to express art as well; the frozen lake of Baikal is now full of huge circles made by a talented artist.

Photos by Gelio.

Where Children Sleep

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:48:07 +0000

Photographer James Mollison has traveled around the world to see how children are living and where they sleep. The results are shocking because most of them are too poor to have a real bedroom, and the differences between the children are enormous. This can be a wake-up call for everybody.

Lamine is 12 and lives in Senegal. He is sleeping in a room with several other boys, and the beds are so simple that they use bricks for legs. He works on the school farm, where they learn how to dig, harvest maize, etc. In his spare time he loves playing football.

Tzvika is 9 and lives in Beitar Illit, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. He shares his room with his siblings. Televisions and newspapers are banned as well as sports, so Tzivka likes to play religious computer games, and wants to become a rabbi.

Jamie is 9 and lives with his family in a penthouse on 5th Avenue, New York. He wants to be a lawyer like his father so he goes to a prestigious school. Besides that he takes judo and swimming classes.

Indira is 7 and lives with her family in Nepal. In their house there’s only one single room where the children shares a big mattress. She wakes up early in the morning and works six hours a day. She also goes to school but dreams about being a dancer when she gets older.

Kaya is 4, lives with her parents in a small apartment in Tokyo, Japan. Her bedroom is full of clothes and dolls. She has 30 dresses and coats, 30 pairs of shoes and a bunch of wigs. Kaya wants to be a cartoonist when she grows up.

Douha is 10 and lives with her huge family in a Palestinian refugee camp in Hebron, West Bank. Her brother killed himself and 23 civilians in a suicide attack against the Israelis in 1996. Douha wants to be a paediatrician.

Jasmine is 4, lives in Kentucky, USA, with her parents and three brothers. She has entered more than 100 beauty pageant competitions. In her spare time she does rehearsals with her personal trainer. Jazzy dreams of being a rock star when she grows up.

This homeless boy and his family is living on a mattress in a field in Rome, Italy. The family came all the way from Romania, but when they arrived in Rome, they camped on private land until the police threw them off. The boy’s parents clean car windscreens because they cannot get legal work.

Dong is 9 and lives in Yunnan in south-west China with his big family. He loves to write and sing, and in the evenings he spends one hour doing his homework and one hour watching TV shows. He dreams of being a cop when growing up.

Roathy is 8 and lives on Phnom Penh in Cambodia. A huge rubbish dump is unfortunately his home, and his mattress is made from old tyres. He wakes up at six every morning to start work which is looking for cans and plastic bottles that they eventually sell to a recycling company. He has only one meal per day.

Thais is 11 and lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with her family. The neighbourhood she lives in are involved with lot of gang rivalry and drug abuse, but it has undergone major improvements. Thais wants to be a model when she gets older.

Nantio is 15 and a member of the Rendille tribe in northern Kenya. She lives in a tent where the whole family sleep. She went to a school village school but she quit because she is hoping that a moran (warrior) will marry her soon. before the marriage she has to undergo circumcision which is completely normal where they live.

Joey is 11 and lives in Kentucky, USA. He likes outdoor activity and to go hunting with his father, and he already owns two shotguns and a crossbow. His first kill was made when he was seven when he shot a deer. He also attends school and loves watching TV while petting his dragon lizard pet.

Concordia Research – The Loneliest Place On Earth

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:15:03 +0000

Have you ever wondered how the end of this planet looks like? Now you guys got the chance. On the Antarctic Plateau in Antarctica there is located the Concordia Research Station which operate every day every year.

The summer temperature tend to be -25C, so just imagining the winter makes you scared. You would maybe think that this research station is run by Russians, but no, the truth is that it’s partly French and partly Italian.

It mostly measures climate and atmosphere but you never know, but the air has hardly pollution so it makes it perfectly fit for research. Just imagine how it was to built this station; they had to do it during the little warmer summers.

It is about 500 kilometers away from humans and it opened in 2005. And when I say humans, I mean people that work on the nearest station, so the Concordia is even further away population, and you can say that it’s the most lonely place on earth.

The workers use a lot of days just to get out there from where their airplane left them 1100 kilometer away.

There are no plants of animals, except for some seabirds called “skua”. Another place that is perfect for research is on the Norwegian island Svalbard.

Via Kuriositas.