Author: Richard

… is a 16 mile long ice road in the European nation of Estonia. This road has a number of unique rules:

On this particular road, it is forbidden to wear a seatbelt: you
might have to make an unexpected and speedy exit from your car.

You
can’t drive here after sunset, or with a vehicle over 2.5 tonnes. And
it is strictly illegal to travel at between 25 and 40km/h (16-25mph). At
those speeds, your car tyres will create dangerous vibrations that
could crack the surface of the road, sending you and your vehicle to a
watery grave.

You can read more – and see some pictures – here.

(Relatively) fresh off the wire from AP:

Archaeologists unearthed one of the largest statues found to date of a
powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh at his mortuary temple in the
southern city of Luxor, the country’s antiquities authority announced
Tuesday.

The 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III was
one of a pair that flanked the northern entrance to the grand funerary
temple on the west bank of the Nile that is currently the focus of a
major excavation.

We’ll keep an eye out for follow-up stories about mysterious calamities befalling the archaeologists involved in this excavation. More details here.

… can be found, at great risk to life and limb, atop a mountain in China. The path to the teahouse is so precarious that only the most dedicated tea aficionado would dare brave it. Check out this picture:

You can see more here.

In Minnesota’s Judge C. R. Magney State Park, there exists a strange and mysterious waterfall known as The Devil’s Kettle. What’s so strange about this cascade?

Apparently, according to Wikipedia, the river splits in two at the head of the falls. The “eastern flow goes over a two-step, 50 foot waterfall and continues downstream,” no different than any other waterfall, but the “western flow surges into a pothole, falling at least 10 feet (3.0 m), and disappears underground.” The water’s outlet has “never been located,” despite scientists’ best efforts:

Researchers have dropped brightly colored dyes, ping pong balls, and other objects into the Devil’s Kettle without result.^[12]
There is even a legend that someone pushed a car into the fissure, but
given that the Devil’s Kettle is wholly inaccessible by road, most
commentators dismiss this as hyperbole.^[5][13]
Not only is the outlet unknown, but there is currently no satisfactory geological explanation for the Devil’s Kettle.^[7]:57 Certainly riverbed potholes are known to form from rocks and grit swirling in an eddy
with such force that they eventually drill a vertical shaft in the
bedrock. How the flow is conducted away laterally, however, remains
enigmatic.

It’s certainly not a place I’d like to go swimming, at any rate. You can read more here.

Check out this compilation of AT&T advertisements from 1993-1994. Unlike previous predictions we’ve featured (1, 2, 3) a lot of these hit pretty close to the mark (although several we’re still waiting on, and others will likely never happen – namely, video pay phones). Pretty interesting either way.

Our traditional spring hiatus has reached its end, my loyal adverblians. Let the march of interesting oddities resume!

We bring you this intriguing story from ScienceNow:

A new study reveals that, just like humans, humpback whales in the South Pacific follow musical trends
that change by the season. Moreover, these songs always move from west
to east across thousands of miles of ocean–from the east coast of
Australia to French Polynesia–over the course of a year or two. The
authors say it’s one of the most complex and rapid patterns of cultural
evolution across a region ever observed in a nonhuman species.

You can find further details here!

This sounds like an interesting find:

Archeologists have found new clues about the music early Klondike
stampeders were listening to during the Yukon Gold Rush, thanks to
recordings found aboard a 110-year-old shipwreck.

The three records and a gramophone were discovered last summer in the
A.J. Goddard, a sternwheeler that sank in Lake Laberge, north of
Whitehorse, in October 1901.

You can read more here (where you can also hear the music!).

San Francisco artist Jeff Waldman recently installed the first of twenty tiny doors that will soon uncannily adorn the streets of San Francisco. His description of the project:

The idea is to install small doors, unexplained portals, throughout the
city. To start, in San Francisco. These doors would be scaled down to a
size that is cognitively possible but whimsically improbable. Tiny ones.
Like, Alice Through The Looking Glass, maybe 15-25 inches or so. I
don’t imagine them to be operable, but the more detailed in appearance
the better.

You can read more here. (Via LaughingSquid.) 

Apparently, there exists beneath Beijing a series of secret chambers and passageways, the likes of which rivals the Paris catacombs. From Pmgtg.com:

In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing
beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all
six million of its then inhabitants so that if nuclear war did kick off,
folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while
the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there.

You can read and see more here.

This is something I’ve wondered about from time to time. It turns out that

The small distinguishing mark you see over a lowercase /i/ and a lowercase /j/ is called a tittle – an interesting name that seems like a portmanteau
(combination) of “tiny” and “little,” and refers to a small point or
stroke in writing and printing. Generally, a diacritic dot such as a
tittle is also referred to as a glyph.
However, in regards to /i/ and /j/ – the removal of the mark is still
likely to be read as /I/ or /J/; as such, these are not examples of a
glyph.

Derived from the Latin word “titulus,”
meaning “inscription, heading,” the tittle initially appeared in Latin
manuscripts beginning in the 11th century as a way of individualizing
the neighboring letters /i/ and /j/ in the thicket of handwriting. With
the introduction of the Roman-style typeface in the late 1400’s, the
original large mark was reduced to the small dot we use today.

More details here.

Cordyceps, as we noted last September, is the name of a parasitic fungus that can possess the brains of carpenter ants. Check out this video clip of the phenomenon from Planet Earth:

While Mazda is handling the situation admirably, I can’t help but suspect that this incident will irrevocably tarnish their reputation among the arachnophobic.

Mazda has some creepy crawly culprits in its new safety recall — spiders.

After discovering spider webs in the vents, the Japanese automaker
is recalling more than 50,000 Mazda6 cars from the 2009-2010 model years
in the United States and an additional 15,000 vehicles in Canada,
Mexico and Puerto Rico.

The company said Thursday a spider could weave a web in a vent
connected to the fuel tank system and clog up the tank’s ventilation.
Pressure on the fuel tank could lead to a crack, causing fuel leakage
and the risk of a fire.

Read more here.