THE COOLEST PLACE ON EARTH

Antarctica is the coldest place on the earth

Antarctica holds the record for being the coldest place on Earth, which together with extensive ice cover and lack of winter sunlight makes the continent pretty inhospitable to life. The sea, rather than the land, is what supports most creatures such as penguins and seals. It's often warmer than the land, so is a good place to retreat to and warm up to a balmy -2 Celsius. Permanently land-living plants and animals in Antarctica are small and ground-hugging to avoid wind chill and the accompanying dehydration.

WORLD'S MOST UNUSUAL PLANTS

These are the top 4 of the most Unusual plants & flowers, enjoy!

1. Rafflesia arnoldii: this parasitic plant develops the world's largest bloom that can grow over three feet across. The flower is a fleshy color, with spots that make it look like a teenager's acne-ridden skin. It smells bad and has a hole in the center that holds six or seven quarts of water. The plant has no leaves, stems, or roots.

2. Hydnora africana, an unusual flesh-colored, parasitic flower that attacks the nearby roots of shrubby in arid deserts of South Africa. The putrid-smelling blossom attracts herds of carrion beetles.

3. Dracunculus vulgaris: smells like rotting flesh, and has a burgundy-colored, leaf-like flower that projects a slender, black appendage.

4. Amorphophallus: means, literally, "shapeless penis." The name comes from the shape of the erect black spadix.

WORLD FAMOUS BLUE LAKE CAVE OF BRAZIL

Mato Grosso do Sul region in Brazil (and especially the quiet town of Bonito) boasts many marvelous underground lakes: Gruta do Lago Azul, Gruta do Mimoso, Aquário Natural. The world famous "Gruta do Lago Azul” (Blue Lake Cave) in Brazil is a natural monument whose interior is formed by stalactites, stalagmites and a huge and wonderful blue lake. The beauty of the lake is something impressive. The Blue Lake Cave has a big variety of geological formation but impresses mainly for the deep blue colored water of its inside lake.

                             

WORLD’S GREAT ICONIC BUILDING SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre on Bennelong Point in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, who in 2003 received the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour.

There is no doubt that the Sydney Opera House is his masterpiece. It is one of the great iconic buildings of the 20th century, an image of great beauty that has become known throughout the world – a symbol for not only a city, but a whole country and continent.

The Opera House was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007. It is one of the world's most distinctive 20th century buildings, and one of the most famous performing arts centres in the world.

The Sydney Opera House is situated on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour, close to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It sits at the north-eastern tip of the Sydney CBD, surrounded on three sides by the harbour (Sydney Cove and Farm Cove), and neighboured by the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Contrary to its name, the building houses several separate venues rather than a single opera theatre, the two main venues, the Opera Theatre and the Concert Hall, being defined by the two larger shells. The Sydney Opera House is a major presenting venue for Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony, as well as hosting many touring productions in a variety of performance genres, and is a major tourist attraction. It is administered by the Sydney Opera House Trust, under the New South Wales Ministry of the Arts

The Sydney Opera House is an expressionist modern design, with a series of large precast concrete 'shells', each taken from a hemisphere of the same radius, forming the roofs of the structure, set on a monumental podium. The building covers 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres) of land, and is 183 metres (605 ft) long and 120 metres (388 ft) wide at its widest point. It is supported on 588 concrete piers sunk up to 25 metres below sea level. Its power supply is equivalent to that of a town of 25,000 people, and is distributed by 645 kilometres (401 Miles)of electrical cable.

The roofs of the House are covered in a subtle chevron pattern with 1,056,006 glossy white and matte cream Swedish-made tiles from "Höganäs", though from a distance the shells appear a brilliant white. Despite their self-cleaning nature, the tiles are still subject to periodic maintenance and replacement.

The Concert Hall is within the western group of shells, the Opera Theatre within the eastern group. The scale of the shells was chosen to reflect the internal height requirements, rising from the low entrance spaces, over the seating areas and up to the high stage towers. The minor venues (Drama Theatre, Playhouse, and The Studio) are located beneath the Concert Hall, as part of the western shell group. A much smaller group of shells set to one side of the Monumental Steps houses the Bennelong Restaurant. Although the roof structures of the Sydney Opera House are commonly referred to as shells (as they are in this article), they are in fact not shells in a strictly structural sense, but are instead precast concrete panels supported by precast concrete ribs.

Apart from the tile of the shells, and the glass curtain walls of the foyer spaces, the building's exterior is largely clad with aggregate panels composed of pink granite quarried in Tarana. Significant interior surface treatments also include off-form concrete, Australian white birch plywood supplied from Wauchope in northern New South Wales, and brush box glulam

Performance venues and facilities

The Opera House houses the following performance venues:

• The Concert Hall, with 2,679 seats, is the home of the Sydney Symphony, and used by a large number of other concert presenters. It contains the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ, the largest mechanical tracker action organ in the world, with over 10,000 pipes.

• The Opera Theatre, a proscenium theatre with 1,507 seats, is the Sydney home of Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet.

• The Drama Theatre, a proscenium theatre with 544 seats, is used by the Sydney Theatre Company and other dance and theatrical presenters.

• The Playhouse, an end-stage theatre with 398 seats.

• The Studio, a flexible space, with a maximum capacity of 400 people, depending on configuration.

• The Utzon Room, a small multi-purpose venue, seating up to 210. It is the only interior space to have been designed by Utzon, having been renovated in 2004 under his direction.

• The Forecourt, a flexible open-air venue with a wide range of configuration options, including utilising the Monumental Steps as audience seating, used for a range of community events, Live Sites, and special-occasion performances.

Other areas (for example the northern and western foyers) are also used for performances on an occasional basis. Venues at the Sydney Opera House are also used for activities such as conferences, ceremonies, and social functions.

The building also houses - A recording studio, five restaurants, four souvenir shops, and a guided tour operation.

10 WORLD'S GREATEST LIVING ROCKS

The practice of creating buildings, sculptures or monuments by carving natural rock is called 'Rock-cut architecture,' a tradition with over 5000 years. Some famous, others little known, meet some of the most breathtaking works created from the 'living rock.'

 1. Great Sphinx of Giza (Egypt)

A reclining lion with a human head that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile, near modern-day Cairo, is the largest monolith statue in the world. Standing 73.5 m (241 ft) long, 6 m (20 ft) wide, and 20 m (65 ft) high, the Great Sphinx of Giza is also the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians in the third millennium BCE. The Great Sphinx faces due east and houses a small temple between its paws.

2. Petra (Jordan)

Famously described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" by John William Burgon, UNESCO has described Petra as one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage. In 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site, and recently designated as one of the “new wonders” of the world.

Located in Arabah, Ma'an Governorate, Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains, the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba is renowned for its rock-cut architecture. The Nabateans constructed it as their capital city around 100 BCE, after their decline, the site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced to the West by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.

The picturesque site was featured in various films such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

3. Mount Rushmore (USA)

A famous monumental granite sculpture created by Gutzon Borglum, Mount Rushmore is located within the United States Presidential Memorial that represents the first 150 years of the history of the United States of America with 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of former United States presidents (left to right): George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level. The memorial attracts approximately two million people annually.

4. Leshan Giant Buddha (China)

Built during the Tang Dynasty, the Leshan Giant Buddha is carved out of a cliff face that lies at the confluence of the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers in the southern part of Sichuan province in China, near the city of Leshan. The sculpture, which is seventy one meters (about 230 hundred feet) tall dwarfs the tourists that flock to see it. It is positioned so that it faces Mount Emei and stands at the meeting place of three rivers. Although the Government of China has promised a restoration program, the statue has suffered from the effects of pollution, particularly over the last twenty years. Fortunately, the statue was not damaged in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.

5. Mahabalipuram Shore Temple (India)

Built on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in Mahabalipuram (India) in the early 8th century by the Pallava King Rajasimha. The shore temple actually consists of 2 back to back shrines, one facing the east (the Bay), and the smaller one facing west.

It stands on the edge of the Bay of Bengal. At high tide, the waves sweep into its compounds. The walls and their sculptures have been battered and eroded by the winds and waves for thirteen hundred years. Yet they stand intact.

Mahabalipuram was a flourishing sea port in the times of Periplus and Ptolemy (140 AD). There is an old legend here that originally there were seven temples; of these, six have been swallowed by the sea and only one temple -the Shore Temple- remained. There are evidences of submerged structures under the waves and sporadic excavations are going on, but it is too early to say whether there really was a glorious city and six more temples which now lie submerged under the waves off the coast off Mahabalipuram.

6. Abu Simbel (Egypt)


A set of two temples near the border of Egypt with Sudan, Abu Simbel was constructed for the pharaoh Ramesses II who reigned for 67 years during the 13th century BC (19th Dynasty). The temples were cut from the rock and shifted to higher ground in the 1960s as the waters of Lake Nasser began to rise following completion of the Aswan High Dam.

The Great Temple is dedicated to Ramesses II and a statue of him is seated with three other gods within the innermost part of the rock-cut temple (the sanctuary). The temple's facade is dominated by four enormous seated statues of the Pharaoh (each over 20 metres or 67 feet high), although one has been damaged since ancient times. The Small Temple was probably completed ahead of the Great Temple and is dedicated to Ramesses' favorite wife, Nefertari. At the entrance stand six 10-metre-high (33 feet) rock-cut statues - two of Ramesses and one of Nefertari on either side of the doorway.

7. Dazu Rock Carvings (China)

The Dazu rock carvings in Chongqing, China are hewn from the cliffside, featuring more than 5,000 statues and over 100,000 Chinese characters of inscriptions or epigraphs. It is reputed as 'the county of rock carving' and it’s located at the southeast of Sichuan province. The Dazu Rock Carvings was built from 650 in the Tang Dynasty and continued to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911). Among the rock carvings, there are more than 5,000 statues and over 100,000 Chinese characters of inscriptions and epigraphs.

8. Church of St. George (Ethiopia)

The Church of St. George is a monolithic church in Lalibela, Amhara Region, Ethiopia. It is the most well known and last built (early thirteenth century) of the eleven churches in the Lalibela area, and has been referred to as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". The dimensions of the complex are 25 meters by 25 meters by 30 meters, and there is a small baptismal pool outside the church, which stands in an artificial trench. According to Ethiopian cultural history, Bete Giyorgis was built after King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty had a vision in which he was instructed to construct the church; Saint George and God have both been referred to as the one who gave him the instructions.

As of 2006, Lalibela is still a pilgrimage site for members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; the church itself is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Rock-Hewn Churches,
Lalibela".

9. Borobudor (Indonesia)

Officially, Borobudur is a ninth-century Mahayana Buddhist monument in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. Actually, it is much older than that. The monument complex comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 statues of Rama citizens. Each wall has a story that relates to the stories of the birth of Buddha and other Buddha figures. A main dome, located at the center of the top platform, is surrounded by 72 Rama citizens seated inside perforated stupa. (Photo by Simon Kennedy)

10. Cappadocia (Turkey)

Cappadocia lies in the mid-western part of Turkey. An extraordinary landscape formed millions of years ago by the combined work of lava spitting volcanoes, wind and water, there is culture too: the inhabitants of the area hew rooms, chapels, even whole villages out of the rocks. Religious Byzantine paintings can be found on the walls of the churches and monasteries.

GRAND PRISMATIC SPRING

The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is the largest hot spring in the United States, and one of the largest in the world.Yellowstone National Park contains the most concentrated array of hot springs and geysers in the world. It is 90 meters (300 feet) across and 50 meters (160 feet) deep. In the center of the pool the water is 87° C (188° F)—too hot to support life. In the cooler water along the edges of the pool, however, colonies of thermophilic (heat-loving) cyano-bacteria and algae thrive. Yellow, orange, and red pigments are produced by the bacteria as a natural sunscreen. As a result, the pool displays a spectrum of colors from the bright blue of the center to the orange, red, and brown algal mats along the edges.

WORD'S LARGEST CAVES DISCOVERED IN VIETNAM

A British caver wades through Vietnam's Son Doong cave, Earth's largest known cave passage, according to a survey team.

At 262-by-262 feet (80-by-80 meters) in most places, the Son Doong cave beats out the previous world-record holder, Deer Cave in the Malaysian section of the island of Born

The biggest known cave in the world is hidden in a jungle in Vietnam, but a team of cavers with the help of a local farmer are exploring its depths.

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