Figure Of Fun

Monday

Transportation Monument

Back in 1735, twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the great victory of the Russian army over Swedes at Poltava was a monument to "Samson tearing the lion's mouth. " The author of this work of art made by the sculptor B.-K. Rastrelli. The song itself was plated in the original form. Years passed, sculpture changed from lead to bronze, then Samson disappeared during the German occupation and then was cast in 1947. Samson was so young and handsome he is often gold in the 70's, 90's and 00-ies without dismantling, but here came in 2010, and our "retired" it's time to go is for major repairs. Omit the details of the restoration work and go to the middle of April 2011, when he was in all its glory went to his place of service.

Labels: Art, Funny, History, Info, Interesting

# posted by Dany @ 3:30 AM

Tuesday

King of buttons

Dalton Stevens, of Bishopville, South Carolina, received his title "King of the Buttons", after he spent 15 years stitching and gluing thousands of buttons and buttons for all sorts of places and objects.

History of Buttons King began in 1983 when he was tormented by insomnia. While the TV work up to two nights, so he decided as a pass time before sleep. He found an old denim kombinizon and began to sew on buttons for him. After two years and 10 months of Dalton is still suffering from insomnia, but it was covered in 1633 kombinizon buttons. So it went ...

Labels: Cool, History, Informative

# posted by Dany @ 1:42 AM

Kizhi Pogost Single-block Masterpieces

Almost three hundred years ago the Russian inhabitants around Lake Onega decided that they needed two new churches – the old ones had burned down in a fire. It was decided that the island in the middle of the lake, Kizhi, would be the ideal place for their new place of worship. So began the construction of a pair of what have become two of the oldest exclusively wooden churches in the world. All who see them agree - they are multi-story, mutli-cupola, single-block masterpieces.

Labels: History, Informative, Interesting, Wonderful

# posted by Dany @ 2:08 AM

Saturday

10 Deadliest Shipwrecks in History

There is a romantic element to the disaster of a shipwreck that is associated with no other form of transport. It may be that the ethos of 'women and children first' – established by the brave men of the HMS Birkenhead in 1852 – who, realizing that there were too few lifeboats for everybody, sacrificed themselves to save the most vulnerable. 460 heroes died that day, but this was a small number in maritime history. What's more, while RMS Titanic may be the most notorious shipwreck on record, but it is by no means the worst.

10. SS Eastland

SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago. In 1915 the vessel was chartered for a works outing to Michigan City, Indiana. Filled to capacity, the ship suddenly turned turtle in just 20 feet of water, apparently after a majority of the more than 2,700 passengers had assembled on one side. Part of the blame had to be new safety legislation, as the vessel was slightly top-heavy following the fitting of additional lifeboats to meet the new rules. As the ship rolled, hundreds became trapped or crushed by heavy furniture moving around inside the public areas and 845 poor people died.

9. MS Estonia

This ferry was in its sixteenth year of use when things went disastrously wrong on a crossing of the Baltic sea in 1994. It transpired that the massive bow doors of the ship had not been closed properly so that it had been shipping water from the time it left port. As more poured into the ship, it began to list. Evacuation orders were issued just as the list to starboard steepened dramatically. Loss of power stopped the crew from making meaningful broadcasts for help. Of the 989 passengers and crew, 852 lost their lives.

8. MV Wilhelm Gustloff

This disastrous sinking is almost unknown to most people, possibly because it happened in wartime. The MV Wilhelm Gustloff sank in January 1945, having been torpedoed by a Soviet S-13 submarine. A former hospital ship, it had been refitted as a floating barracks for German Kriegsmarine personnel stationed near Gdansk. During its final voyage evacuating civilians and troops – who would almost certainly otherwise have been captured by the Red Army – the ship was hit by three Russian torpedoes and sank in less than 45 minutes. Around 1,000 men died.

7. RMS Empress of Ireland

The Empress was an ocean liner built on the Clyde in Scotland in 1906. She left Quebec City in 1914, bound for Liverpool and carrying almost 1,500 people in total. On the next day, this unfortunate vessel was hit by a Norwegian ship laden with coal. The liner was so badly damaged that she rolled over to sink in just 14 minutes. Among the 1,012 dead were 279 women and 134 children. Amazingly, one survivor was a fireman who had already survived the sinking of the Titanic.

6. The General Slocum Paddle Steamer

General Slocum was chartered on June 15 1904, setting off in the morning with 1,300 passengers. A fire broke out soon after departure, but Captain Van Schaick did not find out about it soon enough. No maintenance had been done on the ship's safety equipment. Fire hoses fell apart and lifeboats were tied up and out of reach. Life preservers, manufactured in 1891 and hung above the deck, unprotected from the elements for thirteen years, proved useless and fell apart in the passengers' hands. Most on board were women and children who could not swim; even victims who did not don the worthless life preservers found that their heavy wool clothing weighed them down in the water. The captain decided to continue his course rather than run the ship aground or stop at a nearby landing, unaware that, by going into headwinds, he actually fanned the fire. Inflammable paint also helped the fire to spread out of control. Some passengers jumped into the river, but many died being mauled by the still-turning paddles as they attempted to escape into the water or over the sides. By the time the ailing ship was beached just off the Bronx shoreline, an estimated 1,021 people had been killed by fire or drowning, with only 321 surviving the horror.

5. RMS Titanic

The most famous wreck in history, and the most romanticised, the White Star Line's flagship Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world when launched from Belfast in 1912. On the night of 14 April that year, on her maiden voyage, she struck an iceberg and sank after two hours and 40 minutes. A final tally of 1,517 dead made it one of the worst ever maritime disasters, and one of the most notorious, in part because her owners had advertised the glamorous vessel as being "designed to be unsinkable". The public fascination which followed the sinking has never really abated.

4. MV Doña Paz

After colliding with an oil tanker in December 1987, this passenger ferry quickly sank while en route to Manila from Samar Island in the Philippines. The tanker, Vector, had been carrying thousands of barrels of volatile hydrocarbons, and once these had ignited, killing most on board, the ensuing fire quickly spread to the ferry. The official death toll is put at 1,565 although numerous reports attest to the vessel being seriously overcrowded and suggest the true death toll was 4,375. If so this would make it the world's worst ferry disaster as well as the most lethal peacetime maritime disaster in history.

3. SS Sultana

The loss, in April 1865, of the SS Sultana, a classic Mississippi steamer, resulted from an on-board explosion about eight miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. Many of the 1,800 dead were former Civil War soldiers being returned home, but the event was somewhat overshadowed by the recent and shocking assassination of President Lincoln. Despite the resulting fire illuminating the sky for miles around, it received relatively little coverage outside the local area.

2. Halifax Harbour Explosion

In early December 1917 French cargo ship SS Mont Blanc, fully laden with ammunition, collided with the Norwegian ship SS Imo – causing a massive explosion which devastated the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. 2,000 people were killed and a further 9,000 injured by fires and flying debris, most of them Canadians. The blast flattened an estimated two square kilometres of buildings along the shoreline while creating an artificial tidal wave (which inflicted further damage on the settlements of Richmond and Dartmouth) and a pressure wave which toppled scores of trees.

1. SS Kiangya

In 1948 this Chinese steamship, carrying up to 5,000 passengers, exploded and sank in the Huangpu River, close to Shanghai. The fatal explosion was almost certainly the result of hitting an Imperial Japanese Naval mine left over from WWII. The exact death toll remains unknown, but is believed to be around 3,900, even though many survivors were pulled from the water. Many of the victims were refugees from the Chinese Civil War. The manifest listed 2,150 passengers – despite an official capacity limit of 1,186 – but she was also carrying several hundred crew and almost certainly stowaways too.

These were undoubtedly terrible tragedies, thousands of lives lost to the merciless oceans as ships came to grief. Yet just because one shipwreck achieves notoriety, it does not mean that it is the worst ever recorded, more that the immediacy of the event makes it so memorable. The sea is indeed a harsh mistress and I hope never to have first-hand experience of just how cruel it can be.

Labels: History, Info, Interesting

# posted by Dany @ 3:31 AM

Tuesday

Another 11 Mysterious Islands in Fiction

As trilogies are the popular thing for works of fiction, it is fitting that a series of lists about fiction also follow the trilogy format. Now on our third list of mysterious islands of fiction (see here and here for the others, the first of which also appeared in Listverse.com’s Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists for those of you who still need to pick up some holiday gifts for friends and family alike) from ancient, medieval and modern American, British, French, Greek and Japanese culture, as you can see below, we have hardly exhausted them all, and, indeed, some might argue that a few of those listed below are as culturally significant as those found on the earlier lists. And yes, once again, we present the islands in reverse chronological order as we take a mysterious journey backwards in popular cultural time! Since we are also approaching 2011, let us conclude our list trilogy with 11 entries this time around!

Kigan Island

first appeared in Tekken 6 (2009)

The thirty-seventh stage in the Scenario Campaign of the hit game is described in the official strategy guide for the game as, an “island marked on a mysterious map. An ominous cave hidden on this island beckons to those who might be foolish enough to enter it.” See Adam Deats, Joe Epstein and Ian Rogers, Tekken 6: Bradygames Signature Series Guide (Indianapolis: Bradygames, 2009), 38. The boss for the stage is none other than Yoshimitsu – a character introduced in the game as a decoy.

The Island

first appeared in Resident Evil 4 (2005)

The final setting of a financially successfully and critically acclaimed video game, Resident Evil 4’s island does not have as many appearances as the franchise’s Rockfort Island (number 7 on the second list), but it does have some memorable boss battles with monstrous mutated versions of Jack Krauser and Osmund Saddler. The Island serves as the final location on which the remaining mysteries of the game’s plot are revealed to protagonist Leon Kennedy.

Isla del Muerta

first appeared in House of the Dead (2003)

The director’s cut version of this much maligned movie was actually quite funny. Sure, many despise this film in its theatrical cut, but it does have, in addition to the prerequisite zombies, evil experiments gone wild and a villain from the days of Spanish sailing, loosely reminiscent of the much more popular Lost, and even a German boat captain that reminds me a bit of Peter Jackson’s King Kong’s Captain Englehorn. Say what you want about the film’s quality, but the “Island of the Dead” is pretty darn mysterious and undeniably contains many elements akin to the more celebrated islands elsewhere on this and the other two lists.

Yoshi’s Island

first appeared in Super Mario World (1990)

This titular island of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995), first appeared in its predecessor and served as a central location in one of the most significant video game series/franchises in that medium’s history. The story and characters border on the surreal and silly (Yoshi is, after all, a reptilian character totally lacking the “frightful” characterization of, say, a Godzilla). Nevertheless, the island, part of Dinosaur Land in the Mushroom Kingdom, is undeniably one of both mystery and adventure, in that it is a central location for a major character in video game history who goes on a semi-epic quest to battle a villain.

Absalom

first appeared in The Penal Colony (1987)

Herley’s novel became the basis of the film, No Escape (1994), that starred such well-known actors as Ray Liotta (Goodfellas) and Lance Henriksen (Aliens). A penal island in the manner of Devil’s Island or Alcatraz…but in the future!…2022 to be exact, serves as the primary location of the story. The film was even released in some markets as Escape from Absolom, and also received a three-issue comic book adaptation from Marvel Comics. This island is one of the rare ones on these lists of mysterious islands to actually figure in a future setting.

Summerisle

first appeared in The Wicker Man (1973)

This fictional island appears in two films (the first inspired by islands near Scotland, and the remake near Puget Sound). In both films, the suspense and horrors the protagonist experiences extend beyond being burned alive as a wicker man by fanatical pagan islanders. If you haven’t seen the original of this film you really should – it is extremely chilling and has some excellent acting.

Monster Island

first appeared in All Monsters Attack (1969)

With such famous inhabitants as Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan, Monster Island, as with King Kong’s Skull Island, is the stuff of gigantic, monstrous nightmares. The island appears in a few films (mostly from the 1970s) and has been referenced numerous times in such mainstream popular culture as on The Simpsons.

The Island of Misfit Toys

first appeared in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Not one anyone brought up in the comments sections on Listverse, nevertheless, the home of King Moonracer, Charlie-In-The-Box, Spotted Elephant and other defective and/or otherwise unwanted toys is a memorable element of twentieth century popular culture that South Park spoofed in 1999, nearly forty years after its appearance on the 1964 television special. In the spoof, Sexual Harassment Panda journeys to South Park’s Island of Misfit Mascots where Kenny dies, no thanks to one of the commune’s unfortunate residents. Just as The Simpsons parodied Skull Island with Ape Island, South Park continued that seeming tradition of animated fair presenting their unique spins on mysterious islands from classic works of fiction.

The Coral Island

first appeared in The Coral Island (1857)

This book’s significance is due largely to the fact that, nearly a century later, William Golding wrote the much more famous Lord of the Flies (1954), as a response to Ballantyne’s earlier novel. That was about a teenage boy named Ralph and two others, on an uninhabited Polynesian island where they endure and experience everything from piracy to cannibalism. Golding’s later tale, which has been adapted into films, once again features main survivors named Ralph and Jack, only some of the boys become savages, as well, in Golding’s version of a similar narrative. Golding’s Jack Merridew is a particularly despicable character that no “good” man would ever want to be referred to as by another.

Ogygia

first appeared in The Odyssey

While technically referenced in The Odyssey earlier than number one on this list, and thus one of THE first ever mysterious islands in fiction, Odysseus’s time on Ogygia occurs, chronologically, after his time on Aeaea (SPOILER ALERT: number 1 on this list!). The ancient Greek hero spends seven years on this island, home to the nymph Calypso, that, as with other locations in ancient Greek mythological literature, may or may not be associated with real locations. This island plays a crucial role in one of Western Civilization’s earliest adventure stories and has been depicted in paintings by such major artists as Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), as well as in the 1997 TV mini-series version of the epic featuring Vanessa Williams as Calypsso. This particular character has served as the inspiration for a same-named voodoo priestess in Marvel Comics and a sea goddess in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

Aeaea

first appeared in The Odyssey

Yes, number one is yet another island with an “A” name and, as with the first list, yet another one from ancient Greek literature. And yes, it is from the same work of fiction as number 2 on this list; however, it is unquestionable that The Odyssey is one of the founding texts of Western, if not world, literature, and is thus so important to our heritage that it is one work of fiction worthy of earning both the number 1 and 2 spots. In the epic, Odysseus stays on the island home of sorceress Circe (played by Bernadette Peters in the 1997 mini-series) for a year. While there, she turns his men into pigs and provides the hero with crucial advice for the rest of his “odyssey”. The island may be based on, or inspired by, an actual Mediterranean island due to the conflicting literal versus mythic nature of Homer’s work. Aeaea, as with any number of locations from Homer’s poem, transcends many other fictional islands in terms of importance. The Odyssey is a staple of high school English courses, at least in America, and has influenced and been adapted in many subsequent literary and cinematic works of fiction. Moreover, The Odyssey predates Plato’s first references to Atlantis by centuries. While some might take issue with two islands from the same work of fiction appearing in succession on the same list, no one can seriously deny the importance of Circe and Calypso’s islands for subsequent Western, if not world, culture.

Thanx to original uploader : Listverse

Labels: Art, History, Info, Interesting

# posted by Dany @ 5:08 AM

Friday

Maritime Museum in Dusseldorf

In the only surviving tower of Düsseldorf castle, built in 13-16 centuries, today a museum of navigation. The museum was opened in 1984 and contains more than 2000 exhibits, giving full information about the history of navigation on the Rhine and the very "village Düsseldorf. The museum is located in one of the most beautiful squares in postwar Europe Burgplatz (Burgplatz 30 40213 Düsseldorf). Hours: Thursday through Sunday from 11 to 18 hours.

1. Ticket price: adults - € 3. Children and teens under 18 can visit the museum free of charge.

2. From the castle is preserved only the tower.

3.Login museum.

4. In the maps and photographs can be traced all the port development and shipbuilding industry from the Middle Ages to the present day. Port since that time has changed

5. The landscape of the Rhine. Click on a button - starts flowing water.

6. Above left - analogous to "Barge Haulers on the Volga." Only instead of people - the horse.

7. Collected historical model ships from the 3 rd century AD.

9. Fishing nets. The fish swims inside, and no longer comes up.

10. Medieval squadron of ships.

12. Left of the layout of the port, in the middle - samples of products that carry the Rhine.

13. Ship from the top - the steamer Oscar Huber, the last surviving paddle steamer on the Rhine with a steam engine. The original stands in Duisburg on Vinkekanale the museum ships.