Landmarks // Current TV

20 Overlooked National Landmarks in the U.S.

20 overlooked national landmarks in the U.S.

mbchad1
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San Francisco Made of Jelly

In the pictures you will see the beautiful city of San Francisco made of nothing but... more

worrg
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100 Historical Sites Every American Should See

If you’re interested in exploring the history of America through its landmarks,... more

sunnyspeaks
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Travel Bug Robert - Mount Rushmore

Robert travels to perhaps the most American national landmark there is: Mount... more

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Earth Hour 2010 Before and After in Pictures

On March 27 at 8:30 p.m. local time, 4000 cities in 125 countries voluntarily dimmed... more

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Travel Bug Robert - Golden Gate Bridge

Robert travels to the majestic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. The... more

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New Bank Loans Revive Controversial Ilisu Dam Project in Turkey

The Turkish government plans to move forward with the dam despite international opposition.

Ilisu dam project would flood the historic town of Hasankeyf, one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world.The Turkish government will continue construction of the Ilisu dam on the Tigris River after receiving loans from three national banks, Turkey’s environment minister said, according to Reuters.

“This dam will be built definitely because we need it,” said Minister Veysel Eroglu, Reuters reports.

Three Turkish banks will provide $430 to $500 million towards the estimated $1.7 billion cost of the dam.

The money will fill make up for financial losses incurred in July 2009 when a consortium of European credit agencies backed out of the project after they determined the dam would not meet World Bank environmental and cultural preservation standards.

Turkish officials argue that the 1,200 megawatt dam will help reduce the country’s reliance on energy imports, and evenutally bring in money from tourism and fishing.

The Ilisu dam is part of Turkey’s Southeast Anatolia Project – an economic development program for the country’s poor southeastern corner. The $32 billion-project, known in Turkish as GAP, will build 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric projects to boost irrigated agriculture in the arid region.

Downstream countries Syria and Iraq oppose many of the GAP dams because they fear it would give Turkey too much control over the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

International furor over the Ilisu dam has arisen because the project would flood the historic town of Hasankeyf, one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world.

Dam opponents have tried to pressure the Turkish government to recognize Hasankeyf’s historical importance and nominate the site for UNESCO World Heritage status.

In an attempt to compromise, the Turkish government agreed to move 12 of the town’s 300 monuments to a new cultural park above the planned reservoir, but critics say the monuments are fragile and many would crumble.The Turkish government plans to move forward with the dam despite international... more

JanforGore
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Oscar the dog goes on World Woof tour

Meet Oscar. He's a small stray dog his owner Joanne rescued from a pound in... more

sophosthegreat
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Abandoned Russian Polar Nuclear Lighthouses

Russian Northern coast is a vast territory lays for a few thousand of miles and all this coastline is inside the Polar Circle. Long polar winters mean no daylight at all, just one day changes another without any sign of the Sun rising above the horizon. There is only polar night for 100 day a year.

But across this Northern coast there was always a short way for the cargo boats to travel from Eastern part of Russia to the Western. Now this trip can be made fairly easy with the appearance of all the satellite navigation equipment like GPS and others, but during the Soviet Era they had none of this.

So, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to build a chain of lighthouses to guide ships finding their way in the dark polar night across uninhabited shores of the Soviet Russian Empire. So it has been done and a series of such lighthouses has been erected. They had to be fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds and hundreds miles aways from any populated areas. After reviewing different ideas on how to make them work for a years without service and any external power supply, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures. So, special lightweight small atomic reactors were produced in limited series to be delivered to the Polar Circle lands and to be installed on the lighthouses. Those small reactors could work in the independent mode for years and didn’t require any human interference, so it was very handy in the situation like this. It was a kind of robot-lighthouse which counted itself the time of the year and the length of the daylight, turned on its lights when it was needed and sent radio signals to near by ships to warn them on their journey. It all looks like ran out the sci-fi book pages, but so they were.

Then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did it job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment. It sounds creepy but they broke into the reactors too causing all the structures to become radioactively polluted.

Those photos are from the trip to the one of such structures, the most close to the populated areas of the Russian far east. Now, there are signs “RADIOACTIVITY” written with big white letters on the approaching paths to the structure but they don’t stop the abandoned exotics lovers.

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2198Russian Northern coast is a vast territory lays for a few thousand of miles and all... more

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What is All the Babble in Dubai About ?!

TOWERING; A first look inside Burj Dubai, the tallest skyscraper in the world, as it... more

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Photographic Remakes of Famous Sites

Remakes, reboots, whatever you want to call them, are all the rage in the... more

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IWal-Mart's History of Destroying Sacred Sites

A re-consecration ceremony was held this past weekend at a damaged Indian mound in Oxford, Ala. As we reported last month, the 1,500-year-old sacred and archaeologically significant site was partially demolished during a taxpayer-funded economic development project, with the excavated dirt to be used as fill for construction of a Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store owned by Wal-Mart.

Following protests, the city appears to be backing away from the destruction, with a local landowner reporting that his property would be the source for the fill instead.

But it turns out the incident in Oxford is not the first time Arkansas-based Wal-Mart has been involved in the controversial destruction of sacred and/or archaeologically significant Native American sites.

Reader Marlin Mackley brought to our attention a similar incident in Fenton, Mo., a picturesque historic town along the Meramec River in the eastern part of the state. Inhabited for over 1,000 years, the area was home to the Fenton Mounds, two earthen burial structures dated between 600 and 1400 A.D. But in 2001, the Fenton Mounds were leveled for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Mackley wrote on the website he created to document what happened:

As a 15 year resident of Old Town Fenton I watched in tears as the Former Fenton Indian Burial Mounds Mesa as I call it was excavated. Over and above the crimes against human history perpetrated by these preditory developers we in my city have to look at the back of a plain block building set on top of a pile of rocks.

The St. Louis Riverfront Times newspaper reported how workers with SCI, the engineering firm hired to determine whether there were remains at the site, grew short on time so began digging less carefully -- and soon struck human bone. Recalled Debra Magruder, a member of the crew who later filed a complaint with the state:

"The story I heard was that the guy working in that area thought it was a tree root and used some root clippers and snapped it in half. Then, when they figured out it was a femur, they just covered it and left it, half sticking out, and a looter came and ripped it out of the mound." The femur was indeed protruding from within a stone box chamber. On Feb. 17, a survey crew lifted the tarp and found that someone had dug horizontally into the vault and stolen the bone.

Doing a little digging of our own, Facing South discovered that what happened in Oxford and Fenton were not isolated instances. There have been numerous cases involving destruction of Native American burial grounds and other culturally significant sites by Wal-Mart:

* An Indian burial site in Nashville, Tenn. was demolished to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Charlotte Pike in the late 1990s. The company behind the project was JDN Realty of Atlanta, a developer for Wal-Mart stores since purchased by Developers Diversified Realty Corp. of Ohio. By the time excavations were completed in August 1998, the remains of 154 people including children had been taken from their graves, according to the Alliance for Native American Rights.

* In the mid-'90s, Wal-Mart developer JDN was involved in the relocation of numerous native graves while building a store in Canton, Ga., Wal-Mart Watch reports. The store set up a permanent display of unearthed Indian artifacts next to its layaway counter.

* When an Indian burial ground was discovered during construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the northern California community of Anderson, the company proceeded with the project anyway, opening the store in 2007. In June of this year, to make up for the site's desecration, the store erected a bronze statue of a native Wintu feather dancer that was vandalized before the dedication ceremony.

* In 2004, Wal-Mart opened a store in Mexico within view of the 2,000-year-old pyramids of Teotihuacan despite months of protests by local residents as well as prominent Mexican artists and intellectuals. In an interview with the Associated Press, novelist and poet..A re-consecration ceremony was held this past weekend at a damaged Indian mound in... more

mae37
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NYC Landmarks to Go Dark for Earth Hour

New York City landmarks will go dark for an hour as part of a global ``lights... more

ebindelglass
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Beijing's 'Big Underpants' and other landmarks

The bizarre and ever-bizzare..er architecture that continuously springs up around... more

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Two giant horse heads guard entrance to Scotland

It has been revealed that two giant horse heads, each the height of a ten storey... more

ClareW
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See Venice, before it sinks

It's part of the Venice scenery during winter months. "Acqua alta," or high water. Water splashes over the quays and bubbles up through the sewers in St. Mark's Square during high tide. It's a progressing problem, as waters levels rise and the seabed recedes.

But, Venice and the Venetians are prepared. Pictures from early October show temporary elevated walkways. It's estimated that 20 million people visit Venice annually. Those who come in the winter months have to be able to get around. There's much to see, starting with St. Mark's Square, where you can see the cafes and pigeons, the Basilica and the bell tower.

The bell tower, called the Campanile in Italian, is leaning three inches. Preservationists are wrapping a titanium belt around the foundation about two yards below ground to keep it from falling over, as the current tower's predecessor did back in 1902. Then, as now, the problem started with a crack. The current one was noticed in 1939 and is seen as a sign that its foundations - thousands of wooden posts driven into unstable ground - are failing to provide adequate support.

A similar problem affects a 500-year-old palace on the Grand Canal, where you can see an opera. It's entertaining, and it lets you experience one of the grand palaces as you move from room to room following the drama. (musicapalazzo.com)

You realize when you're in the building that it's listing a bit toward the canal. There's no danger of sliding out the window, but it's an example of what's happening; Here again, rising water and subsidence are undermining the foundations of Venice's buildings.

Living on the bottom floor of some of the homes is impossible. Bottom floor windows have been cemented over.

Italy has spent billions over the last decades to combat the problem, with mixed results.

But there has been one unexpected benefit to the effort to save Venice. A coral reef is growing at the $7 billion flood barrier under construction and it has become a gathering place for exotic flora and fauna, some of which have ended up there because of global warming.

The waters around Venice are now warm enough to support marine life usually found further south in the Mediterranean and Red Sea. As many as 150 different species have been found, including an endangered shelled creature that can grow to three-feet long.

The project is run by the Venice Water Authority and has the acronym MOSE, a play on the Italian word for Moses (you may remember his relations with water from the Bible). The pictures of jellyfish, crustaceans and rare coral supplied by the project managers are spectacular.

No one is sure of the solution to Venice's sinking problem. The only certain thing is what's there, is worth all the troubleIt's part of the Venice scenery during winter months. "Acqua alta," or... more