Agdam, Azerbaijan: Ghost Town of War

Chances are you haven’t heard of Agdam. Founded less than 300 years ago, it doesn’t have much history. Its location is of little importance and nothing historically significant ever happened there. Until 1993, that is, when the city came under siege during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Forty thousand people were forced to flee when forces shelled the town. Eighteen years later the town sits vacant, still a part of the Armenian buffer zone.

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St. Francis Dam: Worst U.S. Engineering Disaster of the 20th Century

Sometimes Interesting

The collapse of the St. Francis Dam in 1928 is one of the worst catastrophes of the twentieth century. Today it is an engineering disaster case study. Just before the stroke of midnight on March 12th, a dam 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles containing the largest reservoir in California catastrophically failed. What would soon follow was a massive wave of destruction that would ultimately destroy much of Ventura County and claim the lives of nearly 600 people.

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Medical Firsts: The Story of Phineas Gage

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The year was 1848, and 25-year-old Phineas Gage was earning wages as a railroad worker in Vermont. His task was to blast rock to clear the way for new railroad tracks. On September 13th, one blast detonated prematurely and shot a 4-foot metal rod through Gage’s skull. Miraculously – and without the benefit of medical technologies we have today – he survived and managed a full recovery.

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Hotel that took 25 Years to Build: The Ryugyong

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North Korea has not historically been known for progress or leading the world in anything. In the mid-1980s they wanted to change that perception by building something massive, something that would be world-renowned. The project would symbolize progress for North Korea and introduce new, Western investors. The government decided to build a hotel – taller than any in the world – and in 1987 construction on the Ryugyong Hotel began. It was intended to be completed in 1989 in time for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, but developers would face nearly every conceivable hurdle and by 1992 the project was abandoned.

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Abandoned coal mining town in Siberia: Kadykchan, Russia

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Deep in the Magadan region in remote Siberia, a coal mining town known as Kadykchan was built by Gulag prisoners during World War II. At its peak, the town housed nearly 11,000 residents. By the early 1990s, the decreased demand for coal and the fall of the Soviet Union would see the town start to decrease in importance. A mine explosion in 1996 killed six people and prompted ownership to shut down the mines altogether. Today, there are fewer than 200 people left in this remote town. There are no services, winters are extremely harsh, and the only way into town requires traveling on a ghost highway.

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Abandoned Mediterranean Resort: Varosha Quarter in Famagusta, Cyprus

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In the early 1970’s Varosha, Cyprus was one of the Mediterranean’s most glamorous and popular tourist destinations. An upscale quarter in Famagusta Bay, its bright blue waters and beautiful sandy beaches were draws for such celebrities as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, and Brigitte Bardot among others. Population eventually grew to about 39,000, but by the end of 1974 the town would be conquered by Turkish troops, fenced off completely, and be left with a population of zero. Today the former millionaire’s playground resort still stands vacant and fenced off, guarded by Turkish soldiers and unlikely to re-open anytime soon.

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The Coldest Inhabited Place on Earth: Oymyakon, Russia

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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).

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Electronic Waste Dump of the World: Guiyu, China

Sometimes Interesting

Guiyu China electronic waste dump of the world

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.

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