The Monastery Under The Lake

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Take a trip up the Volga river in Russia and when you get to the small town of Kalyazin keep your eyes peeled for something unusual. There, in the middle of an artificial lake stands something a little perplexing.

During the 1940s the then Communist government had big plans to make the turbulent river navigable all year around. So a cascade of dams and reservoirs was ordered on the Upper Volga. It gave the region the much needed transport artery and hydroelectricity in to the bargain. It also buried hundreds of years of history, of which the bell tower of the Makaryevsky Monastery is the only visible remnant above the waters of the Uglich reservoir.

In The 1930s, Daredevils Would Drive Up Walls With Lions For Passengers

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The Wall of Death is a carnival sideshow featuring a silo- or barrel-shaped wooden cylinder inside of which motorcyclists, or the drivers of miniature automobiles, travel along the vertical wall and perform stunts, held in place by centripetal force.

Derived directly from United States motorcycle boardtrack racing in the early 1900s, in 1915 the first 'silodromes' with vertical walls appeared. Sometimes the riders drove alone, sometimes they had another performer as a passenger and sometimes the passenger was a lion.

The Great Seattle Windshield Epidemic

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The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic is a phenomenon which affected Bellingham, Seattle, and other communities of Washington state in 1954. It is considered an example of a mass delusion. It was characterized by widespread observation of previously unnoticed windshield holes, pits and dings, leading residents to believe that a common causative agent was at work. It was originally thought to be the work of vandals but the rate of pitting was so great that residents began to attribute it to everything from sand flea eggs to nuclear bomb testing.

Originating in Bellingham in March, police initially believed the work to be vandals using BB guns. However the windshield pitting was soon observed in the nearby towns of Sedro Woolley and Mount Vernon and by mid April, appeared to have spread to the town of Anacortes on Fidalgo Island.

Ghost Towns Of The Pacific Northwest: Bordeaux, Washington

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For 60 years the logging town of Bordeaux, Washington prospered because it was located in the heart of Capital Forest where towering fir and cedar trees provided beams for buildings, spars for sailing ships and shingles for roofs. The 120 ft. straight, clear spars went to Maine to provide the masts for the fast clipper ships.

Mumby cedar shingles were prized in the Midwest as the best quality for homes and businesses. After 100 years or more, the warehouses of Seattle and Tacoma are now offices and upscale restaurants with the original, massive, open beams milled from forest giants that once were common, but now are protected.

The Peasants Of St Petersburg

Fascinating pictures from the 1800s capture the gritty world of Russia before the Revolution. Taken by Edinburgh-born artist William Carrick. Together with John McGregor he travelled rural Russia capturing the lives of peasants living and working in Russia.

(via Look At This...)

A Labor Day Hike To Loon Lake

photo used with permission

A popular loop leads from the Chinook Campground in the Payette National Forest, along the banks of the Sesech River to the majestic Loon Lake in Idaho, USA. In February of 1943, a B-23 Bomber got lost in the snowy mountain wilderness of Idaho. Short of fuel, the crew realized that they’d have to land soon, and searched desperately for a place to touch down. Everyone survived the rough landing.

The wreckage from the Chinook Bomber is still in the woods. After 69 years, it's still pretty intact. It's probably too remote to effect a clean-up, and anyway it serves as a remarkable memorial to humanity's will to survive.

(thanks Juergen)

Jantar Mantar - Immense Astronomical Instrument Of The Maharajahs

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These remarkable constructions appear to all intents and purposes as if they could have been built to create the set for a new science fiction blockbuster set on a planet light years away from Earth. Yet these are centuries old instruments, designed and used in Jaipur, India, to explore the heavens. Their production was ordered by a great Maharaja in the early decades of the 18th century and they have been in constant use ever since.

The name is derived from Yantra, instrument, and Mantra, for formula or, in this context, calculation. Therefore Jantar Mantar means literally calculation instrument.

36 Pictures Of The Construction Of The Titanic

At the time when the Titanic was put down on paper and of course when the ship itself was built, the world thought that such a vessel, weighing in at 52,310 tons, couldn't float. But as time went on, and the ship eventually became sea ready, the world was in awe at the wondrous feat. The architects of the ship assured everyone that the ship was unsinkable. We all know what happened.

Have a look at these 36 vintage photographs that show the Titanic being built from the ground up. It's a thing of mammoth proportions, and you don't have to look long and hard to understand the scale of this breathtaking vessel.

Police Mugshots Of 1930s Criminals

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All of these men were caught by the long arm of the British law by police in the 1930s. Amazingly, this collection was recently discovered in a junk shop in the northeast of England.

Later these mugshots were donated to the Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums and have been recently released on its Flickr photostream. The clarity of many of them is, to not put too fine a point on it, arresting.

A Day In Pompeii

August 24, 79 AD. The day started like any other day.
An animated film depicting the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.



YouTube link

Roche Rock - Where Tristan And Isolde Hid In Plain Sight

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It is no surprise that Roche Rock in Cornwall in the United Kingdom is associated with a number of famous folktales. It is said that Triston and Isolde hid here when their love had been discovered by Isolde's husband, King Mark. Yet others have fled here from far more frightening enemies than a cuckolded king.

Atop Roche Rock lies the eerie remains of a chapel, dedicated to Saint Michael. The rock, even without the ruins, looks out of place, jutting unexpectedly out of the Cornish landscape. The chapel was built in 1409 and abandoned some centuries afterwards.

11 Monarchs Crowned While They Were In Diapers

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Babies sure are cute. But do they make good world leaders?
Here's a peek at some of history's youngest rulers and their reigns.

The Maijishan Grottoes - Artistic Treasure Of China's Past

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China has four major Buddhist cave complexes - by far the most visited being the Longmen caves. Less well known are the Maijishan Grottoes. Situated in Gansu Province in the northwest of China, this astonishing example of cave architecture hewn from rock consists of over 7,000 Buddhist sculptures not to mention almost 1000 square meters of murals.

Playing With Matches: Sexy, Silly 1930s Ads That Went Up In Smoke

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Smoking is growing more taboo now, but back in the 1930s, cigarettes were sexy. And where there was smoke, there were matches. At one point, nearly every business in the country, whether it was a national chain or a local Mom 'n' Pop, produced logoed matchbooks to help their customers fuel their nicotine habit.

Matches were shaped like bowling pins, beers, and sexy ladies. Believe it or not, they compass everything from WWII racism against the Japanese to burying your dead to living it up in Atlantic City.

(thanks Lisa)

The 10 Greatest FBI Agents In History

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Of all the US law enforcement agencies, the FBI has had one of the most intriguing and controversial histories. From humble beginnings as the plain old Bureau of Investigation, the FBI has, since then, been on the front line of the struggle against crime in America, from battles with armed bank robbers during the Great Depression era, to its involvement in the War on Terror and War on Drugs in the 21st century.

If the three letters only conjure images of Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, find out more about those who truly excelled in this exciting career: the 10 greatest FBI agents in history.

(thanks Karl)

The Airship Postcard Albums Of Lord Ventry

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The golden age of the passenger airship came to an abrupt halt on May 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg scorched the night sky over Lakehurst, New Jersey. The public understandably lost faith in the zeppelin as a secure mode of transport.

But for the first three decades of the 20th century, an extraordinary variety of lighter-than-air craft shared the airways with early airplanes and gliders. These photographs and postcards illustrate the history of these curious aerostatic vehicles, both before and after the Hindenburg. Although there's no definite information about the owner of the postcards, it may have been Arthur Frederick Daubeney Olav Eveleigh-de-Moleyns, better known to the public as Lord Ventry.

Gargoyles - Glorious Gruesome Grotesques

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In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between.

They're also strange, bizarre, unpleasant or just plain ugly. They have been hovering around our towns and cities for centuries, for so long that it can be forgotten that they have meaning and purpose. Take a tour of the weird world of the gargoyle.

Baby's First Butcher Shop

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This grisly 1840 doll-sized butcher shop with miniature animal carcasses and a floor covered in sawdust and blood would be shockingly graphic to our modern sensibilities. After all, here in the 21st century, we like to remain cheerfully oblivious about where our meat products come from.

But in Victorian times, such detailed model butcher shops were not uncommon, says Sarah Louise Wood, a curator at the Museum of Childhood at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The real question is: Why exactly do such things exist?

(thanks Lisa)

Bokor Hill Station - Cambodia's Abandoned Town

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The history of Cambodia in the twentieth century is one of almost continual struggle and conflict. One place which encapsulates the traumatic events which the country persevered is the Bokor Hill Station. This eerie ghost town has been abandoned not once, but twice in its history.

Even its birth was savage. Designed as a resort for the French colonists of the early twentieth century, the construction of Bokor Hill Station was complete by 1925. Built by indentured Cambodian laborers it took nine months to build. Almost a thousand men perished during that time.

Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb

How little did we know in 1957. Or maybe we did, and then this is just stupid. On July 19, 1957, five Air Force officers and one photographer stood together on a patch of ground about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They'd marked the spot 'Ground Zero. Population 5' on a hand-lettered sign hammered into the soft ground right next to them.

Directly overhead two F-89 jets roar into view, and one of them shoots off a nuclear missile carrying an atomic warhead. They wait. There is a countdown; 18,500 feet above them, the missile is detonated and blows up. Which means, these men intentionally stood directly underneath an exploding 2-kiloton nuclear bomb.



YouTube link

More about this experiment.

(via b3ta)