Archive
The Coldest Inhabited Place on Earth: Oymyakon, Russia
Oymyakon, a small village of about 500 people in the Sakha region of Russia, holds the claim to fame as being the coldest continually inhabited place on Earth. Located approximately 20 miles northwest of Tomtor on the Kolyma Highway in Siberia, it is not easily accessible.
Situated in an area known as Stalin’s Death Ring, Oymyakon set the record for the lowest temperature ever recorded by a permanently-inhabited settlement in 1924 when a Russian scientist endured a frigid -96° Fahrenheit (-71 C). Read more…
Electronic Waste Dump of the World: Guiyu, China
Ever wonder where those old used computers end up? How about all those old CRT monitors, cell phones, keyboards, and PDAs? We’re told when we drop off our old electronics for recycling that they will be properly disposed of; in some cases we pay recyclers to ensure our old electronics are disposed of in the correct way.
It is easy to wipe our hands of these discarded items, feeling we’ve done our part – but have we? What we don’t know is what the “recyclers” do with these parts and where the discarded items end up. You rarely hear about electronic waste sites; perhaps it is time we start paying more attention. Read more…
