Pyramid-Shaped Mountain in Antarctica Sparks Online Conspiracy Theories

A pyramid-shaped peak in Antarctica’s Ellsworth Mountain range has been fueling all sorts of conspiracy theories involving aliens and ancient civilizations for at least seven years.

Satellite images of a pyramid-shaped mountain peak in Antarctica first appeared on the internet in 2016. Measuring 2 kilometers square in each direction at its base, a design reminiscent of Egyptian pyramids, the geological structure instantly became the inspiration to all sorts of online conspiracy theories. Some claimed that it had been built by an ancient civilization 10,000 years ago when Antarctica was warm, while others said that it was the work of aliens. But while it’s true that a naturally-occurring pyramid of that size seems unlikely, geologists would tell you that this is actually just that, a mountain that happens to look like a pyramid.

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The World’s Largest Roundabout Has a Circumference of 3.4 Kilometers

The Putrajaya Roundabout in the administrative capital of Malaysia holds the Guinness record for the world’s largest roundabout. It measures 3.4km in circumference and features 15 entry/exit points.

Located in the heart of Putrajaya, the administrative capital of Malaysia, the Persiaran Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Roundabout, aka Putrajaya Roundabout, is one of the most unusual attractions in the Southeast Asian country. It was designed by renowned Malaysian architect Hijjas Kasturi and inaugurated in 2003. A feat of modern infrastructure engineering, the world’s largest roundabout is built around Istana Melawati, the second-largest palace of Malaysia’s Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Putra Perdana Landmark, and a luxurious five-star hotel. It is also the main access point to Putrajaya’s major attractions, including the prime minister’s green-domed office complex and the city’s enormous mosque.

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World’s Deepest Hotel Has You Sleeping 1,375 Feet Underground

Located in an abandoned mine, 419 meters under the mountains of Snowdonia in Wales, the ‘Deep Sleep’ hotel is the world’s deepest hotel.

Comprised of four private twin-bed cabins and a grotto room with a double bed, a dining area, and toilet facilities, Deep Sleep is a hotel unlike any other. Set deep within a section of the abandoned Cwmorthin slate mine, 1,375 feet (419 meters) underground, it is being advertised as the deepest hotel in the world. If that sounds like the kind of place you’d actually want to spend the night, know that you’ll not only have to pay up to £550 ($688) per night, and traverse a ‘steep and challenging’ route through the old mine shafts to reach it.

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This UK Farm Is Located in the Middle of a Motorway

Stott Hall Farm is the only farm in the world built right in the middle of a busy motorway, with crash barriers and a fence around it to keep livestock in and out-of-control vehicles out.

The M62 motorway connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull in Northern England is famous for having an inhabited farm right in the middle of its roadways in Calderdale.  The unique farm is one of the ten best-known sights on the UK motorway network, and there are various stories and myths about its existence, the most popular of which claim that the motorway was split because the owners, Ken and Beth Wild, refused to sell. These stories would have you believe that Stott Hall Farm is essentially a ‘nail house’ the likes of which we’ve featured several times in the past. However, the reality of this infrastructural oddity is very different.

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Mmabatho – Probably the World’s Weirdest-Looking Stadium

South Africa’s Mmabatho Stadium is famous for its unusual design, which features elevated stands that don’t actually face the pitch but other stands.

Built in 1981, during the apartheid era, Mmabatho Stadium is often cited as an example of impractical architectural design. It was commissioned by Lucas Mangope’s government which ruled the Bophuthatswana Bantusan and designed by Israeli architect Israel Goodovitch and engineer Ben Abraham. They came up with an unconventional concept that went against pretty much every basic principle of stadium design, and not in a good way. However, authorities apparently loved the idea and went ahead with the construction. After it was inaugurated, it didn’t take long for people to realize that its weirdly elevated stands didn’t offer the best view of the action on the pitch and actually required them to turn their heads to the side in order to watch the match.

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The World’s Largest Hot Pot Restaurant Occupies Half a Hill, Can Serve Up to 5,800 People

The Chinese city of Chongqing is home to the world’s largest hot pot restaurant, a massive eatery that covers an entire hillside, features nearly 900 tables and can seat around 5,800 people at a time.

Chongqing is famous for its hot pot. There are literally tens of thousands of restaurants specializing in the hot, spicy dish to choose from, but if you’re looking for the most impressive one, look no further than Pipa Yuan (枇杷园), a giant eatery terraced on a large hill. Located in the Nan’an district, on the outskirts of Chongqing, covers an area of ​​3,300 square meters, and most diners require directions to locate their reserved table among the hundreds of tables available. Pipa Yuan had long been praised as the largest hot pot restaurant in the world, but last year Guinness Records made the title official.

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Molar City – The Mexican Town with the Most Dentists per Square Mile in the World

Los Algodones, a small Mexican town of about 7,000 people, has the highest concentration of dentists per square mile in the world and is famously known as Molar City.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Los Algodones every year, but they don’t come in search of sandy beaches, they come for veneers, root canals, and dental implants. Of the roughly 7,000 inhabitants of Los Algodones, about 600 are dentists and the four main streets of the town are full of dental clinics offering a variety of services at a fraction of the cost in the United States. Between November and April, the population of Los Algodones almost doubles, as the tiny town is overrun by US tourists, but also some from Canada and even as far as the UK. Despite the stiff competition between dental clinics in the small Mexican town, demand often exceeds supply when it comes to dental services.

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The Picturesque Polish Village Where All 6,000 Inhabitants Live on the Same Street

Sułoszowa, a Polish village of around 6,000 people located in the Olkuska Upland, less than 30 km northwest of Kraków, has been dubbed ‘Little Tuscany’ because of its unusual layout.

The village of Sułoszowa has been around for many years, but it only recently started attracting international attention after bird’s eye photos and videos went viral on social media. Millions of people around the world were mesmerized by the unusual layout of the rural settlement – hundreds of houses on either side of a singular street, snaking through multi-colored agricultural fields as far as the eye can see. Every one of the 5.819 inhabitants – according to a 2017 census – lives on the same street, which stretches for over 9 kilometers.

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The Red River of Cusco – A Fascinating Natural Phenomenon

Every year, visitors of Peru’s Vilcanota mountain range are treated to a unique natural phenomenon, a river running blood red through the pristine rocky valleys of Cusco.

Located approximately 100 kilometers from the city of Cusco, near the well-known Palcoyo Rainbow Mountain, the red river is known as Palquella Pucamayu by the locals. It only runs red for about 5 kilometers before mixing with other streams and small rivers in the area, at which point the color becomes diluted, losing its unique hue. The best time to see the red river in person is during the rainy season (December – April), because the color of the water is directly influenced by the level of precipitation. For most of the year, Palquella Pucamayu is a muddy-brown color, but during the rainy season, large quantities of soil rich in iron oxide are carried down from mountains and color the water bright red.

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Europe’s Highest Train Station Looks Like a Supervillain’s Secret Base

High up in the Swiss Alps, at an altitude of almost 3,500 meters (11,332 feet), lies Jungfraujoch, Europe’s highest train station, a wonder of human engineering that has been around for over a century.

The train doesn’t seem like the best means of transportation when trying to climb a mountain, but the Swiss would beg to differ, and they have proof to back up their claims. At the end of the 19th century, they began work on a project unlike any other – the Jungfraubahn, a steep railway through the Bernese Alps all the way to the ‘top of Europe’. And, at the end of the Jungfraubahn railway, they built Jungfraujoch, a spectacular train station perched on a rock between the Jungfrau and Mönch mountains, both of which soar over 4,000 meters. Today, Jungfraujoch is officially recognized as the highest train station in Europe and is one of Switzerland’s most popular tourist attractions.

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Hotel EastLink – Getting a Room Here Is Literally Impossible

Located alongside a motorway outside of Melbourne, in Australia’s Victoria state, lies Hotel EastLink. At least what looks like a high-rise hotel, because in reality, it’s just an unusual sculpture.

Designed by local artist Callum Morton, the Hotel EastLink was unveiled in 2007, and it has been confusing motorists ever since. It’s not as large as a high-rise hotel –  20 meters tall, 12m wide, and 5m thick – but driving past it at high speed for the first time, it’s really hard to tell, so it’s no wonder that people actually look it up online and actually call in for reservations. To make it even more confusing, at night, some of the windows are lit up, which makes it seem like some of the rooms are occupied. But there are no rooms, and the building itself can’t be entered, because the whole thing is a sculpture designed purely for ornamental purposes.

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The World’s Largest Department Store Is the Most Popular Tourist Attraction in Sweden

Covering an area as big as five football fields and selling over 100,000 products in 25 different departments, Gekås Ullared is not only the largest department store in the world, but Sweden’s most popular tourist attraction by a large margin.

Ullared, a small, unassuming town in the south of Sweden is home to about 800 people, according to the country’s most recent census. It’s really not the most beautiful place to visit in the Scandinavian country, and yet thousands of people from all over the world flock to Ullared every single day. It’s all because of Gekås Ullared the world-famous department store founded in 1963 by entrepreneur Göran Karlsson, which currently holds the record for the largest department store in the world. It has a total of 2,000 employees and can accommodate up to 5,500 shoppers at the same time.

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Monte Kali – The World’s Largest Artificial Salt Mountain

The town of Herringen, in central Germany, is home to a heap of sodium chloride (table salt) so massive that it has come to be known as Monte Kali. It is the world’s largest artificial salt mountain.

The origin of Monte Kali can be traced back to the year 1976, when potash salt started being extracted from mines around the town of Hessen. Back then, potash was used to make products like soap and glass, but today it is an important ingredient in several fertilizers, synthetic rubber, and even some medicines, so extraction intensified over the last few decades. The problem with potash is that mining it generates a lot of sodium chloride as a byproduct, so you need somewhere to store it. The company operating the mines started dumping all this salt a few miles from Herringen, and over the years it created a giant salt mountain locals named Monte Kali or Kalimanjaro (puns for Kalisalz, the German word for ‘potash’).

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Italy’s Famous Upside-Down Fig Tree

The ancient ruins of Baiae, near the modern city of Bacoli, in Italy are home to a botanical oddity known as the upside-down fig tree.

Looking at the tenacious tree growing out of the ceiling of an ancient Roman archway, it’s easy to see why it’s called the upside-down tree. It is literally inverted, growing toward the ground, which is quite rare. No one knows exactly how the fig tree ended up there, or how long it has been growing for, but one thing is for sure –  despite its bizarre location, the fig tree if Baia is growing stronger every year, and sometimes it even bears fruit.

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Helensburgh Glow Worm Tunnel – An Otherworldly Tourist Attraction

The small Australian town of Helensburgh is home to one of the most amazing places on the planet – an abandoned railway tunnel that glows an eerie blue at night.

The Helensburgh Glow Worm Tunnel is an abandoned rail tunnel in Helensburgh, New South Wales which has become famous both for the ghost stories surrounding it and the glow worm colony that give it its iconic bioluminescent blue glow. Originally known as the Metropolitan tunnel, the 624-meter-long underground passage was inaugurated at the end of the 19th century and used to transport coal from the local mine to the suburbs. However, it closed down a couple of decades later and remained abandoned until the mid-90s, enough time for a colony of glow worms to claim it for themselves…

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