China’s Qiantag River is famous for a unique natural phenomenon, a wavy pattern tide that was only observed for the first time in 2021 and has come to be known as fish scale tide.

The Qiantang River’s estuary in Zhejiang Province has long been famous for having the strongest tidal bores in the world. At times, they can get as tall as nine meters, which means the area regularly sees trains of large waves moving upstream against the normal current. However, in 2021, during a scientific expedition, researchers discovered another intriguing natural phenomenon unique to this estuary. When certain conditions are met, the tide comes in spiraling waves that look like fish scales on the water’s surface. The phenomenon hs become known as ‘fish scale tide’.

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A road leading to Bali’s Pandawa Beach that seems to split an entire plateau in half has sparked a heated online debate about the practicality of the project and its effect on local wildlife.

Featuring fine white sand and crystal-clear water, the picture-perfect beach of Pandawa was already one of Bali’s most beautiful seaside destinations, but the road dug into the limestone cliffs separating the beach from the rest of the island really catapulted it into the top tourist destinations on the island. Until only a decade ago, Pandawa Beach was only popular among locals, as the limestone cliffs secluded from foreigners’ eyes were notoriously hard to traverse. However, everything changed in 2012 when a road leading down to the beach was created by cutting through the cliffs. Today, that road has itself become somewhat of a tourist attraction in its own right, but also the topic of a heated debate.

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The shopping mall is considered a symbol of American consumerism and the US is indeed home to over 100,000 shopping malls, but the title of world’s biggest shopping mall actually belongs to one of America’s biggest rivals, Iran.

Located northeast of Teheran, the humongous Iran Mall shopping mall covers an area of 31 square meters and consists of seven floors, but its entire infrastructure area measures a whopping 1.35 million square meters and is set to expand to 1.60 million square meters. Since 2014, over 1,200 contractors and around 25,000 workers worked around the clock to make the world’s largest shopping mall a reality. In 2018, the first phase of construction was completed, and 267,000 square meters of gross leasable area and 708 retail units were opened on 1 May 2018. That same year, Iran Mall set a Guinness record for the world’s longest continuous pour of concrete, with tons of concrete pouring continuously for 6 consecutive days.

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Wisconsin’s Lake Chippewa is home to a giant floating island that sometimes moves around blocking a critically important bridge and needs to be moved by local boat owners working in unison.

Lake Chippewa, aka the Chippewa Flowage, was created in 1923, by flooding a large swamp. Soon after that, many of the peat bogs started rising to the surface and became perfect growing spots for plant seeds carried by wind and wild birds. As the years passed, plants from grasses to trees began to grow and their roots actually caused these floating bogs to grow. Today, they vary from the size of a parking space to several acres, with the largest of them, the so-called “Forty Acre Bog” on the west side of the lake featuring mature trees. Almost every year, dozens of local boat owners team up to push it away from a bridge connecting the East and West sides of the lake.

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A Brazilian adventure firm is offering thrillseekers the unique opportunity to enjoy a picnic at a wooden table suspended above the thundering Cascata da Sepultura, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

The breathtaking experience recently went viral thanks to a short clip posted by an American couple who found it while looking for special things to try in Brazil. In the video, Christianna Hurt and her rapper boyfriend ‘OnPointLikeOp’ can be seen casually enjoying some snacks and a glass of red wine at a picnic table suspended on a bunch of metal wires high above Cascata da Sepultura. The whole experience apparently lasts only 15 minutes and costs $450, but it’s definitely something you’ll never forget.

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Tucked away on the sixth floor of a Nanjing shopping mall is one of the fanciest, most impressive public bathrooms in the world. To some, it is the world’s most beautiful public bathroom.

Designed by X+Living, a Shanghai-based architecture firm, the bathroom on the sixth floor of the Deji Plaza shopping mall in Nanjing, China makes you feel like you accidentally walked into a whimsical palace. That’s not usually the feeling you get from most public bathrooms… It starts out with a long corridor lined with plants coming out of the walls. This part of the bathroom was designed as “an immersive walk-through-a-garden experience”, but it’s hard to focus on the green decor with dozens of giant lamps shining on you from above, and with the light reflecting on the glossy floor.

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Located in Havana, Cuba, Coppelia Park is the world’s largest ice cream parlor. Also known as the ‘Ice Cream Cathedral, it serves around 30,000 customers per day and up to 600 at a time.

Built in 1966, Cuba’s ‘Parque Coppelia consists of a two-storey domed pavilion inspired by Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic Cathedral of Brasilia outside which people queue for ice cream every single day, and a lush park complete with hundreds of tables where up to 1,000 people can enjoy the frozen treats at a time. The story goes that Fidel Castro ordered the building of Coppelia Park shortly after the success of his Communist revolution. He reportedly ordered twenty-eight containers of ice cream from American producer Howard Johnson’s, and upon tasting it decided to respond by creating something bigger and better, but cheap enough that anyone could afford. His idea was a huge hit, and to this day thousands of people continue to enjoy subsidized ice cream at Coppelia Park, the world’s largest ice cream parlor.

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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 German city of Dresden is famous for the Baroque architecture that runs along the banks of the Elbe River, but there is one exception that stands out like a sore thumb – the iconic Yenidze building, aka the ‘tobacco mosque’.

Featuring clear oriental architectural elements of mosques and the famous Alhambra Palace of Granada, the Yenidze has been towering over Dresden’s Friedrichstadt neighborhood for over a century. At 62 meters (203 ft) tall, featuring 600 windows of various styles, and boasting an impressive glass dome, it would be one of the largest mosques in the world, but despite its appearance, the Yenidze is not, and has never been a mosque. For most of its existence, the Yenidze has operated as a tobacco factory and its unusual design was chosen both as homage to the Oriental origin of the tobacco processed here, but also a clever way to vend the rules on architectural restrictions in Dresden’s city center.

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The title of ‘world’s largest gas station’ belongs to a 74,000-square foot Buc-ee’s In Tennessee with 120 gas pumps and 350 employees.

Buc-ee’s, the world-famous giant gas station chain that dominates roads across the American south, operates dozens of gas stations, but none as big as the recently opened one near Sevierville, Tennessee just off of I-40. Buc-ee’s is known for incorporating megastores into their massive gas stations, but this newest one really takes the cake! At 74,000 square feet, the world’s largest gas station features a massive shopping center, a full barbecue restaurant, spacious bathrooms, and a massive rest area. And, like any respectable gas station, it has plenty of gas pumps, 120 to be exact.

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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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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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Lakes come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to roundness, you won’t find a more naturally-occurring body of water than Florida’s Kingsley Lake, aka Silver Dollar Lake.

Kingsley Lake is a popular summer destination in Florida’s Clay County, as well as one of the best bass fisheries in the entire state, but few know that what truly makes this place special is its unusually round shape. The thing is, you can only truly see how round the lake is from high above, which is why its nickname, Silver Lake, was actually coined by airplane pilots flying over it. It’s important to note that Kingsley Lake is not a man-made body of water, but a naturally occurring one which reportedly formed as a sinkhole.

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‘Number 28 on Yongxing Jie’ is an unusual attraction in Guangzhou, China which consists of an eight-storey apartment building surrounded by a busy overpass.

The story of ‘Number 28 on Yongxing Jie’ can be traced back to the year 2008, when a number of buildings in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou were scheduled for demolition in order to make room for a new road. While most of the residents reached an agreement with developers and decided to sell their homes and relocate, three residents of a now-famous yellow apartment building drove a harder bargain, refusing to abandon their homes unless their demands were met. In the end, developers decided to abandon negotiations and instead build an overpass around the building. Today, the story of the ‘encircled’ building is known as Guangzhou’s most tenacious holdout against infrastructure developers.

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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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