Iran’s Shazdeh Garden, also known as the Prince’s Garden, is a surprisingly lush garden full of greenery and water fountains surrounded by arid desert.

Located 6 kilometers from the city of Mahan, in Kerman Province, Shazdeh Garden is a historical Persian garden built by the Qajar Dynasty, at the end of the 19th century. The rectangular complex is surrounded by stone walls that shield the green paradise inside from the harsh desert surrounding it. Seen from the air, Shazdeh Garden looks like a welcoming oasis in the middle of an arid sea, and it’s photos like the ones below that attract thousands of people to this place every year. It features five impressive water fountains supplied through the Qanat technique of transporting water from a well through an underground aqueduct.

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Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, a small rock in northern Africa conquered by Spain in 1564, holds the title for the world’s smallest national border, measuring just 85 meters in length.

Spain has almost 2000 kilometers of land borders with Portugal and France, but it also has much smaller borders with countries like Andorra, the United Kingdom (Gibraltar), and Morocco. It is with the latter, the African nation of Morocco, that Spain shares the smallest land border in the world, an 85-meter-long stretch of land linking a rock about 19,000 square meters in size to the Moroccan coast. Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera has been Spanish territory since 1564 when it was conquered by Admiral Pedro de Estopiñán, and although Morocco has repeatedly laid claim to it, Spain has never agreed to return the land and actually has troops stationed there to enforce Spanish rule.

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For 50 Years, the Rogan Megane Hakubutsukan or Spectacles Museum in Ikeburo, was the most iconic place to go shopping for eyeglasses and sunglasses in all of Japan, probably the world.

Located on the Higashi-dori shopping street in Minami-Ikebukuro, Tokyo, the Spectacles Museum was one of the most Instagram-worthy places in the Japanese capital. Although this was once a simple warehouse, under the guidance of founder and longtime owner Yutaka Takei, it became a giant advertisement for the products being sold inside. What really put the Spectacles Museum on the map was its unique facade, which consisted of thousands of pairs of colorful sunglasses attached to a giant metal frame. It was meant to attract attention, and that’s exactly what it did, in time becoming one of Ikebukuro’s main tourist attractions.

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Stretching for 65 miles (105 km) between the towns of Of and Bayburt in Eastern Turkey, the D915 is an extreme road regarded by many motorists as the most diffcult in the world.

For many years, Bolivia’s Yungas Road, aka the “Death Road”, held the unofficial title of world’s most dangerous road. Photos and videos of motorists navigating the gravel track winding its way through the Cordillera Oriental mountain range to an altitude of 4650 meters have made Yungas one of Bolivia’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing around 25,000 people every year. However, according to some adventurers, there is one less popular road that surpasses the Death Road in terms of difficulty. Linking Turkey’s Northeast Anatolia Province to the Black Sea, the D915 mountain road features a myriad turns and dangerous drop-offs that make it extremely perilous to traverse even for the most skilled drivers.

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The Santuario Della Beata Vergine Maria Delle Grazie, in Italy’s Lombardia region, is an old church famous for having a real taxidermied crocodile hanging from the ceiling.

What’s the last thing you expect to see when you look up in a church? Granted, there are plenty of interesting answers one can think of, but ‘a crocodile’ definitely ranks up there with the quirkiest of them. But if you travel to the small municipality of Curtatone, in Lombardia, Italy, you’ll find a church with a five-century-old crocodile hanging from the ceiling. It’s a peculiar sight, to say the least, but one that has been around for as long as anyone can remember. How the croc wound up at the Santuario Della Beata Vergine Maria Delle Grazie is, and will probably remain a mystery, but its purpose had been linked to religious symbolism.

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The Chained Tree of Peshawar, in Pakistan, has been under arrest since 1899, when a British officer decided to teach it a lesson for moving away from him. It has remained chained ever since.

125 years ago, a drunk British officer by the name of James Squid performed one of the most bizarre arrests in history in Landi Kotal, a town near the Torkhan border. Convinced that the tree was trying to get away from him as he struggled to approach it, Squid ordered it chained to the ground and placed under arrest. The chains have remained in place ever since, and a plaque tells the story of the arrest for curious tourists.

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Mori Ouchi, a cozy cafe in Tokyo’s laidback Shimokitazawa district, is famous for only catering to pessimists and people with a generally negative mindset.

Negative people tend to get a bad rep and are constantly told to be more positive, but, if you think about it, is there really anything wrong with being negative? The founder of Mori Ouchi, a small cafe in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo, certainly doesn’t think so. A self-described gloomy person, he got the idea for like-minded people over a decade ago but only decided to open it three years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The man had always felt like negative people were more sensitive and more easily hurt than others, so he created a space dedicated exclusively to them.

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Tokyo’s Ikebukuro shopping district is home to the world’s largest gashapon capsule toy store – a 1,250m² area decked with over 3,000 gashapon machines filled with various figurines.

Gashapon machines have been a big part of Japan’s recreational culture for over half a decade, but while these toy capsule-filled machines are ubiquitous in the Asian country, the Mecca of gashapon machines is the Gashapon Official Store in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. It features over 3,000 coin-operated machines and probably millions of collectible toys and figurines. Using most of these machines requires a few hundred yen – from ¥200(~$1.33) to ¥500 (~$3.32) – but if you’re feeling generous, you can spin the wheel at the much more expensive ‘premium’ machines, which can cost up to ¥2,000 (~$13.27) on average for one random toy.

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Inishmore, the largest of Ireland’s Aran Islands, is home to a remarkable natural wonder, a rectangular pool cut so straight into limestone that it looks man-made.

Also known as “The Wormhole” or “The Serpent’s Lair”, Poll na bPéist is a natural water basin with an edge length of approx. 10 by 25 meters within a stone formation. It can only be accessed by walking along the cliffs south of the ancient site Dún Aonghasa, but in recent years it has become famous for hosting the renowned Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. The most fascinating thing about Poll na bPéist is its remarkable rectangular shape, which has led many to question its natural origins and sparked several theories, including that it is the work of an ancient civilization.

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Western Poland’s Notecka Forest is home to one of the country’s most controversial buildings, a medieval-style complex known as Stobnica Castle.

The construction of Stobnica Castle began in 2015, but it didn’t start attracting nationwide attention until 2018, when people started wondering what this gargantuan structure rising up at the edge of a well-known nature reserve, on what looked like a man-made island on Lake Stobnica, was. Aerial photos of a 15-storey medieval-like castle rising up in the middle of a pristine natural paradise about 50 km from the city of Poznan started going viral online and piqued people’s curiosity. What was this building, who was the owner and how had they obtained a building permit for it, considering its location at the edge of a Special Protection Area for Birds (20 species) within the Natura 2000 network?

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The so-called ‘Guyiang White House’ is a gigantic structure located in the posh Huaguoyuan Wetland Park area of Guiyang City, in China’s Guizhou Province. It has gone viral as China’s largest mansion, but you can’t believe everything you read online…

Featuring an architectural style usually observed in European palaces and museums, the Guiyang White House has become one of the most iconic sights in the Chinese city of Guiyang. Although many have described it as ‘kitsch’, ‘over-the-top’, and overly opulent’, there is no denying the eye-catching appeal of this megalithic structure, both during the day and at night, when it is illuminated by countless light installations. The structure got its name because of its white exterior and Western architectural influences, but when it comes to size, it actually dwarfs its Washington namesake. The entire complex, including the artificial pond in front of the edifice, is said to cover an area of ​​18.3 million square meters.

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Every year, in late autumn, thousands of people flock to Bangye–ri, a village in Gyeongsang, South Korea, to witness the beauty of a majestic 860-year-old ginkgo biloba tree.

The secular Wonju Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is a national monument of South Korea famous for its impressive crown which currently covers a perimeter of around 17 meters. At around 32 meters tall (104ft), it is not even the Asian country’s tallest ginkgo tree, but the way its branches are spread out makes it one of the most visually impressive trees on Earth. In South Korea, the Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is often called the world’s most beautiful tree.

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Lazy tourists visiting scenic mountain spots in China’s Zhejiang Province can now skip mountain hiking altogether and ride giant escalators hundreds of meters long to reach the best view spots.

Tour operators in China’s Zhejiang Province have installed massive escalators on mountains to help tourists gain access to the best views with virtually no effort. Scenic scots that were once only accessible by hiking on precarious trails are now available to anyone willing to ride one of these escalators for a few seconds, minutes at most. For example, Tanyu Mountain, in Zhejiang’s Chun’an county, has an altitude of only 350 meters, but due to the precarious relief, tourists have to walk three mountains around the mountain in order to reach the summit, making it inaccessible to the elderly and young children. But thanks, to the new escalator, anyone can now reach the top of Tanyu Mountain with virtually no effort.

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Ruki, a tributary of the Congo River, has recently been dubbed the darkest river in the world, with water so dark that you can’t even see your face in front of you.

In what is considered the first-ever scientific study of the African river, scientists concluded that the dark-colored water is caused by the high levels of dissolved organic matter from the surrounding rainforest. Scientists found that the color is caused by carbon-rich compounds leached out of rotting plant matter and washed into the Ruki River by rainwater and floods. Dr Travis Drake, lead author of the recently published study, said that the Ruki is “essentially jungle tea” in which carbon-rich plant matter is brewed. The resulting coloration of the water makes the Ruki darker than the Rio Negro.

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A wooden chair perched on the edge of an exposed attic in Dennis Township, New Jersey, has become an obsession for thousands of people and even spawned its own dedicated social media groups.

A dilapidated house with a collapsed roof located on Route 47 in the unincorporated Dennisville community of Dennis Township has become somewhat of a tourist attraction thanks to a small wooden chair perched right at the edge of its exposed attic. Many of those driving past the house on their way to and from work have become fascinated with this chair that doesn’t really move but is destined to fall at some point. Some want to know how it wound up on the edge, others whether it is nailed to the floor to keep it from falling, and a few are interested in the home’s history and why it is in its current condition. But most are just interested in watching the chair until the day it inevitably falls to the ground.

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