There seems to be a phenomenon occurring all around the world: Giant ships have been sneaking quietly out of the shipyard, going just out the sight of their owners, turning onto their sides and taking a little siesta.

The Mediterranean Sky has been resting off the coast of Greece since early in 2003. We’re not sure if and when she’ll be returning to work, as most of her hull has rusted through.

However, the fact that her lifeboats are still intact (not salvaged as one would suspect) could mean that she is just waiting for someone to come and rouse her from her slumber. There’s a rumor going around that this old girl had some financial problems back in 1997. – Perhaps that is the reason she’s being all lazy, lying around doing nothing?

We’ve seen this sort of reckless abandonment before, so we know this little nap taker isn’t an isolated issue. See for yourself the beginnings of an international problem! What would happen if any old ship just decided to lay up in the shallows? Catastrophe!

To further investigate this crisis of sleeping/deep sleeping ships, check out some of our previous coverage: Shipwreck, Key Largo, More Shipwrecks, Iraqi Shipwrecks, Shipwreck! and Saharan Shipwrecks.

Update: RobK points out another sleeping beauty, this time its the World Discoverer in the Solomon Islands.

Can you find any more? Post the link in the comments and we’ll see how many of these dosing giants we can find!

Canterbury, England has been the stage for many dramatic scenes throughout history. One of the first Christian missionaries brought faith to the people of the city in the 11th century. The national church was founded in that place, and later another famous Christian was brutally martyred at the order of the Crown.

Since that time, every year thousands upon thousands of tourists and pilgrims visit the city to breathe in its historical significance, view its magnificent architecture, and pay their respects at the tombs of the faithful. See if you recognise any of these scenes.

Early Christians

Augustine was sent on mission from Pope Gregory the Great to convert the King of Kent to Christianity. Arriving in Canterbury at the end of the 6th century, he found some success with both the King and the locals. Subsequently he became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

Early into the 7th century he began work on one of England’s oldest and most treasured buildings: Canterbury Cathedral.

The Cathedral sat as the Pope’s eyes and ears in England until the 16th century when Henry VIII broke away from Rome and the Church of England was founded. Today, Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of power for the national church.

Death in the Cathedral

The city and cathedral have played a major role in literature as well. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s beloved work, The Canterbury Tales, a group of pious (and some not so pious) pilgrims set out from London to make their way to the Cathedral to pay their respects to St. Thomas Becket – whose remains were once entombed within its grounds.

Though a fictionalised account, Becket himself was a real archbishop who was murdered in 1170 at the order of Henry II who disagreed with him over the church’s rights. There are many stained glassed windows, as well as other monuments, paying homage to the martyr. Archbishop Becket’s body was buried in a tomb within the cathedral, though his bones were later destroyed – also by order of the king.

Most other Archbishops, however, are buried in St. Augustine’s Abbey, just east of the cathedral’s grounds.

Though it was originally named the Abbey of St. Peter and Paul, it was later renamed to reflect St. Augustine himself. You can see from the satellite photos that most of the abbey’s walls and structures have long since worn away or have been destroyed.

The Oldest School in England

Standing at the edge of the abbey, is another remarkable building – which is believed to be the oldest school in England.

The King’s school has been educating the next generation for just over 1400 years. It was founded on the same grounds as St. Augustine’s Abbey in the 6th century by Augustine himself. Many of the school’s classes, with its 800-odd pupils, are taught within the ancient buildings of the Abbey.

An Unrelated Castle

The last of Canterbury’s great historical buildings shown here isn’t really related to any of the others mentioned, but it makes it into this post of the basis that it is also old and pretty cool looking!

Canterbury Castle was of the three original castles built in this area. The present stone structure replaced a wooden castle from 1066. The newer one was built after the Battle of Hastings and used to guard the important route taken by William the Conquerer.

Kind of in the spirit of the Darwin Awards, someone leased the castle to a gas company in the 19th century. The building (because it was filled with gas most likely) caught fire and the top floor was destroyed. The city planners must have a sense of humour as the Castle sits at the crossroads of Castle Street and Gas Street.

The city of Canterbury is quaint and lovely, steeped in history and an enormous success with tourists. In fact, we’ve only barely uncovered some of the city’s treasures. What is your favourite spot in Canterbury?

It’s Volcano Week 4 here at GSS. Volcanoes, about a week. You know the drill!

Beauty sometimes erupts from utter disaster. Take, for example, the gorgeous crater lake that formed in the remnant bowl of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines. A stunning natural wonder was created from one of the largest, most devastating volcanic eruptions in the past 100 years.

No one knew there was volcanic action happening far below the surface of Pinatubo. The local indigenous people, the Aeta, had no recollection of any previous blasts in their oral history and geologist data was scarce as well.

Yet, during the month of June, 1991 the mountain spewed forth 10 cubic kilometres of hot, molten magma; injecting more aerosols into the stratosphere than that of Krakatoa – one hundred years before.

Due in part to Typhoon Yunya that was ripping through the island nation, the ash cloud that should have been spread over the surrounding oceans instead cycloned back over the Luzon region, where Pinatubo once lay dormant.

The mixture of the typhoon force winds and rain with the ash cloud resulted in a rainfall of heavy mud causing considerable damage to neighboring cities. This included the already evacuated Clark Airbase, a U.S. Air Force establishment, whose many flat-roofed buildings collapsed under the weight of the ash and mud.

The military never permanently returned to the base, instead they turned it over to the Philippine government, who converted half of it into a Philippine Air Force base and the other half into a Holiday Inn Resort complex.

It is easy to see the ravines and canyons coming down the sides of the mountain that are now filled with lahar, a volcanic mud mixture. Lahar filled river beds streak the landscape leading away from Pinatubo.

After years of rainfall, the basin of the once-mountain filled with water to form Pinatubo Crater Lake. Now a tourist destination, many will trek for several hours through deep jungle trails to reach the clear waters of the lake.

Back in 2002, the lake had filled the crater so much that there was fear that the rim might collapse, causing considerable damage to local farms and endangering some 45,000 residents in neighboring villages.

To prevent such a collapse, the government commissioned engineers who sand bagged a makeshift river bed, using a lahar mudflow path, 5 metres wide and then cut a notch the same width in the lowest part of the crater’s rim. They managed to drain off 25% of the crater’s water into the nearby Bucao River.

All in all the blast at Pinatubo caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the deaths of over eight hundred, and damaged billions of pesos worth of property, buildings, and farmland. But, they got a very beautiful lake out of it – that is, if you’re willing to make the trek.

Remember lying on the grass when you were younger, staring up at the sky, allowing your imagination to twist and shape the clouds into an elephant being chased by a mouse or a dragon being slain by a cat? Now what if you were the clouds looking down at the earth? What would your imagination let you see then? Let’s find out.

Desert week may be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun in the sand. We will warn you though, you will need to pick up the phone and call the kid in you and have ‘em cover and play. You’re gonna need their help today.

Don’t guess right away; let your mind rotate the image a little. What do you see?

If you saw the lower part of a man’s face, you saw what we did. The great winds of Algeria have shaped the sand of the Issaouane Erg into a sad man’s face.

His is not the only face we found though. With a softly-curved-upwards nose and the line of the artist’s chisel surrounding the mouth, can you see the face of this little wooden girl?

There seems to be a lot of heads in the desert! Perhaps it is the hand of God doodling in the sand as we’ve found yet another one.

A westward facing goat’s head, maybe? What do you think it is?

Head’s are not the only thing to be seen in the sand though. Take a look at this shape.

The Dr. Seuss-ness of this tree stands out clearly to me. There’s no hatted cat to be seen, but let your imagination see the tree in purple and green.

All of these great sand shifted shapes come compliments of some high resolution imagery in the middle of the Saharan desert. Zooming out on this section it looks like the pockmarked face of a teenager in puberty.

Sadly, the high-res imagery is only available for a small area. The lower-res imagery surrounding the high-res rectangle looks like something you saw under the microscope in biology class. Though a contradiction in terms, we have micro-organisms in the desert.

Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed this little adventure into the sand. We’ve tried to keep it light and fun. Yes, we could have gone all serious on you and pointed out what seems to be a giant pool, enormous piece of tin foil, or a really very odd alien landmark, but every now and again isn’t it nice just to float in the clouds and gaze at the desert formations?

Okay, we’ll leave you with one more. This time we’re not going to tell you what it is though. It’s your turn. Take a look at this mystery shape, let your imagination run away with you, and leave your thoughts below.

Despite Indonesia having more Muslims than any other nation in the world, making up 87% of its total population, the government’s pseudo-religious tolerance¹ is seen within several religious buildings, all standing within a few city blocks of Indonesia’s central seat of power and the highest court in the land.

With over 200 million Muslims in a country whose “religious freedom” is mere decades old it is not difficult to see the significance of these Muslim, Hindu, and Christian influenced buildings.

What you don’t expect to see in the heart of Indonesia is a 100 year old Catholic cathedral. Yet, there it is.

The Central Catholic Cathedral (Gereja Katedral) is the seat of the Archbishop of Jakarta. The current building is a rebuild of the original that was burnt down in the mid-1800s. On Christmas Eve, 2004, the church was the target of a blast bomb attack.

What you do expect to see in a highly populated Muslim country is a mosque. Just a 150 meters from the great doors of the Cathedral are the great halls of the largest mosque in Southeast Asia.

What is significant about The Independence Mosque (Istiqlal Mosque), besides its size, is that its designer was not a Muslim at all. In fact, he was a Christian architect that won the job as part of a contest held by the government in the 1960s. The mosque would take 17 years to build.

Just one block away from The Independence, the same Christian architect, Frederich Silaban, designed another one of Jakarta’s treasured monuments, the National Monument (Monumen Nasional or MONAS); this time taking his influences primarily from the Hindu religion.

Taking 14 years to build, the National Monment is a 137m tall tower that supposedly symbolises the fight for Indonesia’s independence. Visitors generally stand for hours in long lines while they wait to ride up the old, rickety 11-passenger elevator up the deliberately phallic-looking shaft to the central viewing platform. The design of the monument supposedly “combines elements of the male and female physiology”, symbolising fertility in the Hindu-Javanese tradition.

All three of these religiously influenced buildings demonstrate, to a certain extent, Indonesia’s religious tolerance. For if we just cross the street from the National Monument, we will come upon the Presidential Palace (Istana Merdeka) and the Supreme Court of Justice (Mahkama Agung); arguably the nation’s most important political buildings.

The Presidential Palace / The Supreme Court of Justice

From the viewing platform of the National Monument tourists can photograph all of the buildings discussed here within a single panoramic frame. The President’s home, the Supreme Court, the largest mosque in SE Asia, and the central Catholic cathedral all from an Hindu-influenced monument. An impressive vista for sure.

Thanks to Perry Ismangil.