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Awesomely Abandoned
VW BUG IN CANCUN
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| A VW Bug sculpture on display under water in Cancun |
This little VW Bug is part of an underwater museum in Cancun. For those who don't have the courage or the ability to dive or snorkel, there is also the option of seeing it through glass bottom boats.
Underwater, there are over 500 sculptures to view. This VW sculpture is a life-sized replica of the Classic Volkswagen Beetle which houses marine life as well as being entertaining for divers.
RUSSIAN SHIPWRECK IN THE RED SEA
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| Shipwreck in the Red Sea that may have been a spy ship |
There were several shipwrecks in the Red Sea but this particular shipwreck looks like it may have been what is referred to as the "Russian Wreck." It was discovered back in 1988 and treasure hunters think it is the fishing trawler named Khanka. It is believed that the Russians used fishing trawlers for surveillance and communication. There was a lot of communication equipment, electronic devices and batteries found on board, so it was most likely used as a spy ship.
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| The HMS Ontario sank in 1780 |
The HMS Ontario, a British warship that sank in 1780, is the oldest British warship to have been found in the Great Lakes. It was discovered mostly intact between Niagara, New York and Rochester, New York in 2008. The ship sank during a storm and about 130 men lost their lives.
Jim Kennard started searching for the ship 35 years earlier but was not successful until he teamed up with Dan Scoville, another hunter who was searching for sunken vessels. Together, it only took them three years to find this ship.
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| The SS America ran aground in the Canary Islands |
Built in 1940, the SS America was mostly a passenger ship and had gone by several different names up until the wreck, which occurred in 1994.
In 1941, during a period of time when the ship was used by the Navy, there were two Nazi spies aboard among the crew. They were part of the Duquesne Spy Ring and were later convicted, along with 31 other agents when the FBI uncovered them. It was the largest espionage conviction in United States History.
In 1994, on what was supposed to be a 100-day journey, they ran into a storm and the ship went aground just off of the Canary Islands. It eventually broke in two.
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| The Dixon Cove Wreck is partially underwater in Honduras |
The Dixon Cove Wreck occurred in the 1970s, and according to one of many rumors, it was partially caused by a storm that pushed it into the channel so it was stranded there.
The ship was supposedly carrying wood. In an effort to save the ship, they tried unloading it. It was later retrieved by pillagers.
Another rumor claims that they were carrying marble. Still another rumor claims that both the Dixon Cove and another ship (that is also wrecked there) caught on fire and were abandoned. It has been said that both ships were part of the Nicaraguan Revolution.
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| 1911 photo of abandoned mining town |
In 1845, a large amount of silver was discovered in this little town of Silver Islet but efforts to mine the silver were near impossible due to weather conditions and the tumultuous waters of Lake Superior.
They fought against storms, tidal waves, and ice surges all to no avail until decades later, the miners were finally able to retrieve the silver (worth about $3 million) by building a breakwater of rock and concrete that was able to hold back the raging water.
In 1883, all operations ceased due to water-filled shafts and the lack of funds for fuel to keep the furnaces going.
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| Lucy The Elephant has been a tourist stop since the 1880's |
This enormous elephant-shaped building is named Lucy and originally had six stories when it was built back in 1881. It was called Elephant Bazaar and had winding stairs that led up to the howdah, the seat where you would ride an elephant.
Lucy endured many disasters including a fire during a period of time when the building was used as a tavern. During one of these disasters, Lucy's howdah got blown off. By 1960, it had been so neglected that the city condemned it.
When a new developer bought Lucy and wanted to have her removed, a committee formed to save and restore her. After being abandoned for many years, today she is back in operation and fully restored.
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| Once a luxury hotel, Halcyon Hall became part of Bennett College in New York but was demolished in 2014 |
Built in 1890, Halcyon Hall started out as a luxury hotel for wealthy clientele with five stories and two hundred rooms. Unfortunately, the hotel didn't do as well as planned and was closed down in 1901.
In 1907, a school teacher from New York bought it and used it as a school for girls. More buildings were added, which eventually led to it becoming Bennett Junior College.
By the 1970s, it began sinking into debt as more co-ed colleges were popping up. In 1977, it went bankrupt and was abandoned shortly after.
Despite being placed on the National Register for Historic Places, it was demolished in 2014.
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| Sunken boats create a safe harbor for smaller boats |
These ships look like they are sitting on the surface of the water of this beautiful island, but the truth is they were sunken there on purpose on Moreton Island in order to create a safe harbor for smaller boats on the island. That explains why they are lined up the way they are.
These old boats dating back to 1963 were steam dredges and barges that were no longer in use. At the request of a group of boat owners, these old wrecks were placed in the water.
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| Dome houses that were abandoned because of weather |
Retired oil producer Bob Lee built these circular homes in 1980 in Cape Romano, located near Naples, Florida. They were actually very beautiful when they were first built before hurricanes wreaked havoc on them.
They used to have windows all around which gave a beautiful circular view of the beach. The houses were fully solar-powered and self-sustaining.
In 2005, they were sold to John Tosto right before Hurricane Wilma arrived which caused considerable damage not only to the dome houses but also washed away much of the coastline. Now the sea has completely taken the houses over and the only way they can be reached is by boat.
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| An abandoned home in Oregon |
An abandoned home in Boyd, Oregon is just one of the homes left empty after Boyd was un-incorporated in 1955. Boyd is now a ghost town.
The Great Depression had much to do with the demise of the town; especially since the town was already struggling from low wheat prices. Businesses couldn't succeed without visitors coming into the area.
The ghost town has many old dilapidated outhouses.
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| Once the site of St Anne's Asylum, Atkins Hall Apartments are now mostly abandoned |
Back in the mid-1800s, Atkins Hall Apartments was once St. Anne's mental asylum. It was originally three stories high and three blocks long, with men living on one side and women living on the other side.
There were also other buildings such as a gate lodge and the Church of Ireland. About half of this extremely long complex was renovated into apartments but the rest is still mostly abandoned. Some people might find it creepy living in an apartment where mentally ill patients once resided.
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| Mir Diamond Mine in Eastern Siberia, Russia |
The Mir Diamond Mine is an incredible treasure located in the city of Mirny, Eastern Siberia, Russia where diamonds were literally spilling out of the pit from 1957 to 2001. The mine was finally closed down in 2011.
Mir Diamond Mine is one of the World’s largest man-made holes and is referred to as the “Navel of the Earth.”
What is amazing is how a place that looks so deserted could produce diamonds that made many miners rich beyond their wildest dreams.
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| Abandoned theater inside Norwich State Hospital in Norwich Connecticut |
Norwich State Hospital treated both the criminally insane and patients who were mentally unstable. It was new and innovative for its day when the hospital first opened in 1904 with only 95 patients.
As new buildings were added on for dedicated recreation space, it grew to over 1,000 patients by 1915. By 1955, there were 3,186 patients.
The hospital was unlike any other. Recreation areas, like this theater, were added on, housed in separate buildings that were connected by underground tunnels.
All good things come to an end. Investigations of the staff for reports of mistreating patients by starvation, prolonged confinements, beatings, and packing patients in ice led to the hospital finally being shut down in 1996. Many believe the buildings to be haunted.
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Awesome Facts About Planet Earth
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| The Solar System |
The Sun is at the center of the solar system.
Other bodies - planets, asteroids, and comets - revolve around the Sun. Earth, as one of the planets, also revolves around the Sun.
Earth takes about 365 days to orbit the sun.
The distance from Earth to the sun — called an astronomical unit— is 92,955,807 miles according to the International Astronomers Union.
In one year, Earth travels about 584 million miles.
Earth's speed is calculated by dividing 584 million miles by 365.25 days and dividing that result by 24 hours to get miles per hour.
So, Earth travels about 1.6 million miles a day, or 66,627 miles per hour.
Source:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-far-is-the-earth-from-the-sun.html
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Ball's Pyramid - Australia's Natural Wonder
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| Ball's Pyramid, home to giant insects, is in New South Wales |
Ball's Pyramid is an incredible piece of New South Wales geology that many Australians have never heard of.
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| Ball’s Pyramid is about 23km east of Lord Howe Island. |
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| More than a kilometer long and200m wide, Ball's Pyramid is 0.5% in size of the once mammoth volcano that stood here 7 million years ago |
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| Another view showing how vast it is. |
In 1964, climber David Roots photographed a dead "stick insect" on the Pyramid. Roots was part of a group led by Dick Smith who were attempting to become the first to climb the island.
Dick Smith’s group didn’t quite make it to the top after being forced to turn around because of bad weather, but a year later a number of climbers from Sydney University successfully made it all the way.
Determined to reach the summit, Smith returned in 1980 and made it to the top where he erected a flag given to him by then premier Neville Wran.
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| The ‘tree lobster’ insect, which is as large as a human hand, had somehow survived despite the lack of food and the harsh conditions |
It was determined that the creature was an extinct plasmid that had been driven from Lord Howe Island by a rat infestation in the 1930's.
Smith’s love of Ball's Pyramid saw him gladly pay for the construction of a detailed scale model of the island in 2017 which marked the 50th anniversary of that first attempted climb.
Almost 40 years later, a group from the National Parks and Wildlife Service made the startling discovery that the insects were still living on Ball's Pyramid. Most of them were collected and taken to Melbourne Zoo in 2001 to become part of a breeding program.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2108736/Extinct-tree-lobster-alive-clinging-Pacific-rock-taller-Empire-State-Building.html
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
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| https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com |
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The Quagga
The Quagga (pronounced "kwa-ha-ha) was a subspecies of the plains zebra that lived in South Africa until the late 19th century.
Quaggas became extinct around 1878 and the last captive died in Amsterdam in 1883.
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| Taken at the Zoological Society of London Zoo in 1870 |
The only Quagga to have been photographed alive was this picture of a Quagga mare, taken at the Zoological Society of London's Zoo in Regent's Park in 1870.
It is different only in that it has brown and white stripes (not black and white) on the front part of the body. The back was brown with no stripes.
Quaggas were pretty long (8 1/2 feet) but not tall (a little over 4 feet). They were found in big herds in the Orange Free State in South Africa and in the Karoo of Cape Province.
Quaggas were heavily hunted after the Dutch settlement. Attempts to breed them in European zoos was not successful.
In 1984, the Quagga was the first extinct animal to have its DNA analyzed. The Quagga Project is trying to selectively breed Burchell's zebras.
You can read more about the Quagga at Wikipedia.
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Loved The Movie, Bought The House
This house in North Carolina was the setting for the romantic movie "Nights in Rodanthe" starring Richard Gere. It was originally built in the 1980s. At that time, there was plenty of beach area between the house and the water; in fact, there was about 400 feet of beach.
Over the years, the storms, hurricanes, and erosion wreaked havoc on the beach so that the house was literally sitting in the water.
After the movie was completed in 2008, the house was condemned by the city.
Along came a couple who absolutely loved the movie and they wanted to buy the house because they heard it was condemned and they wanted to try to save it. After jumping through some governmental hoops, they were successful in purchasing the house. Then because of beach erosion, they had to move it across the beach a short distance. They took their time to do renovations and they are now using it as a romantic vacation rental.
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https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com/2019/06/loved-movie-bought-house.html
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| The house from the movie "Nights in Rodanthe" |
Over the years, the storms, hurricanes, and erosion wreaked havoc on the beach so that the house was literally sitting in the water.
After the movie was completed in 2008, the house was condemned by the city.
Along came a couple who absolutely loved the movie and they wanted to buy the house because they heard it was condemned and they wanted to try to save it. After jumping through some governmental hoops, they were successful in purchasing the house. Then because of beach erosion, they had to move it across the beach a short distance. They took their time to do renovations and they are now using it as a romantic vacation rental.
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https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com/2019/06/loved-movie-bought-house.html
Human Chess Game
In 1924, there was a rather unconventional chess match being played in Leningrad Square (St. Petersburg, Russia) by Peter Romanovsky and Ilya Rabinovich, who were two popular chess masters of the 1920s.
The players used the telephone to call each other to say what the moves they had made. Then humans on horses acting as chess pieces were directed to move across a huge chessboard covering Palace Square.
Members of the Soviet Union's Red Army served as the black pieces; members of the Soviet Navy were the white pieces.
Each match lasted a laborious five hours. With relaying moves using the telephone and instructing humans to make the moves, it's a wonder it didn't last much longer than five hours.
The game was primarily designed to promote interest among Russian youth that would ultimately lead to world-wide competitions. This human chess game was so popular that it became an annual event.
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Brain Teasing Games Can Slow Down Mental Decay
Playing brain-teasing games for just two hours a week may help slow the progression of dementia and other mind-altering diseases.
Examining the brains of the two groups using an MRI machine, they found that the gaming group had a rise in gray matter in the right hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex, and the cerebellum -- the areas of the brain responsible for spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning and fine motor skills in the hands.
While previous studies have shown differences in the brain structure of video gamers, the present study can demonstrate the direct causal link between video gaming and a volumetric brain increase. This proves that specific brain regions can be trained by means of video games.
It's possible that very soon we will see video games potentially be used as a therapy for patients with mental disorders that cause brain regions to shrink or be altered.
Such diseases include schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer's.
"Whether it's a specially manufactured game or something like 'World of Warcraft,' games are cognitively complex and require mental energy and abilities to play them," said Jason Allaire, an associate professor in the department of psychology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was not involved with the study. "Whenever you do anything that requires mental energy, you're exercising your abilities -- it's just like if you exercise your muscles, you get stronger."
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https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com/2019/06/brain-teasing-games-can-slow-down.html
So all those people who say your brain is going to go to mush, tell them it isn't true. To study how video games affect the brain, German researchers conducted a study, which was released in July 2013. They asked 23 adults with a median age of 25 to play the game "Super Mario 64" for 30 minutes a day, over a period of two months. A second separate control group did not play video games at all.
Examining the brains of the two groups using an MRI machine, they found that the gaming group had a rise in gray matter in the right hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex, and the cerebellum -- the areas of the brain responsible for spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning and fine motor skills in the hands.
While previous studies have shown differences in the brain structure of video gamers, the present study can demonstrate the direct causal link between video gaming and a volumetric brain increase. This proves that specific brain regions can be trained by means of video games.
It's possible that very soon we will see video games potentially be used as a therapy for patients with mental disorders that cause brain regions to shrink or be altered.
Such diseases include schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer's.
"Whether it's a specially manufactured game or something like 'World of Warcraft,' games are cognitively complex and require mental energy and abilities to play them," said Jason Allaire, an associate professor in the department of psychology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was not involved with the study. "Whenever you do anything that requires mental energy, you're exercising your abilities -- it's just like if you exercise your muscles, you get stronger."
https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com/2019/06/brain-teasing-games-can-slow-down.html
Is This What King Tut Really Looked Like?
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| King Tut |
King Tutankhamun - King Tut - was born in 1341 BC during the New Empire Period and died in 1323 BC (in that era, the years go backward). He was born with some physical deformities that hindered his ability to walk as he got older, forcing him to use a cane or be seated at most functions. He reigned as Pharaoh for about ten years and died when he was 17.
His tomb laid relatively undisturbed for over 3,000 years until 1922 when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered it while on a funded expedition. To his surprise, the tomb was almost completely intact.
Inside the tomb, Carter found many expensive artifacts and treasures had been entombed with King Tut, meant for him to enjoy in his afterlife, as per the custom.
When we think of King Tut, we picture the mask image as seen in the above picture. For years, scientists and archaeologists have wondered what the boy king really looked like because artistic renderings were very different from each other, with no two being the same.
What King Tut looked like physically was directly related to his lifestyle and the massive amount of inbreeding that was acceptable between first and second generational family members. His whole life, he suffered from illnesses that scientists believe were directly related to inbreeding.
Tut's Parentage
Akhenaten, Tut's father, married a woman who, for centuries, was believed to be Tut's mother. But findings from a DNA study say that it isn't true and that Tut's mother was likely one of Akhenaten's long line of consorts, five of whom were his own sisters. Her real name is not known. She is referred to as "The Younger Lady" in Egyptian documents.
Tut's Wife's Parentage
A 2010 study revealed the parentage of King Tut's wife, Ankhesenpaaten. Her father was Tut's own father and her mother was one of his consorts named Nefertiti. This means that King Tut married his half-sister.
When she married King Tut, she changed her name to Ankhesenamun. They had two daughters, but both died in infancy.
Controversy has long surrounded King Tut's cause of death. Egyptian experts claim King Tut was aware that he was surrounded by bad actors among his advisors, and that he always had to be on guard for assassination attempts. Since Tut had no heirs waiting in the wings, the family line would come to an end with his death, and any number of advisors thought they could step into the job.
Not so fast. For King Tut's wife to keep the queenly status she had become accustomed to as the wife of Pharaoh, her only option was to marry again. Then that man could take over as Pharaoh, which is exactly what happened.
In 2008, scientists studied the DNA of Tut's mummy to learn more about Tut's life, health, and possibly shed more light on his cause of death.
The scientists discovered that, for a young man, he had quite a few health problems, and they felt that some of them may have contributed to his death.
Tut was about 5 foot 6 inches tall, which is considered average height for a young teen who was probably still in his growing phase. However, his growth could have been stunted by reoccurring malaria which he suffered with for most of his life. Malaria would have also hindered his immune system's ability to heal from infections and broken bones.
In 2011, another study revealed that Tut was most likely physically challenged so that he had to walk with a cane when he was able to walk.
Tut had Kohler's Disease which is a fragile bone disorder that causes infections to heal slowly. Comfort comes with avoiding weight-bearing activities which probably accounts for why there are so many images of Tut in a seated position, whether he was practicing archery, attending festivals and military campaigns, supervising the building of temples and his tomb.
At the time of his death, King Tut had a broken thighbone and was in the throes of a bout of malaria. Scientists say there was evidence he had a club foot, a trait that is typical of inbreeding between first and second generation family members.
The 2011 study revealed that one of Tut's daughter was born prematurely at around six months of pregnancy. The other daughter was full-term pregnancy but she had scoliosis like her father, as well as spina bifida and Sprengel's deformity.
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| Scientists say this is what King Tut looked like |
Nefertiti and her husband the Pharaoh Akhenaten were known for the religious revolution in Egypt, worshipping just one god named Aten, who was a sun disc.
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| Bust of Nefertiti |
Based on the sculpture, Nefertiti was considered beautiful with her defined facial features. With 3D imaging technology, experts were able to determine what they think Nefertiti may have looked like.
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| This is what scientists say Nefertiti looked like in life |
First, the mummy’s face was scanned, then paleoartist Elisabeth Daynes took about 500 hours to recreate the face on the bust. This project seems to prove that “The Younger Lady” was indeed Nefertiti. Upon its release, the image caused much controversy over the supposed color of Nefertiti’s skin.
So what do you think? Your comments are welcomed.
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https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com/2019/05/is-this-what-king-tut-really-looked-like.html
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