High up in the Italian Dolomite mountains, 90km north of Venice, the Vajont Dam was the scene of one of the 20th century’s worst engineering disasters. The tallest dam in the world when it was completed in 1959, at 262m, it was beset with problems from the beginning. On October 9, 1963, before it had even been completely filled, an enormous landslide (the 2km-long scar of which can still be clearly seen) sent 260 million cubic metres of mountainside into the lake behind the dam, causing a wave of water 250 metres high to spill over into the valley below.

The giant wave completely destroyed five villages, killing almost 2,000 people, maybe even more. Strangely, the dam itself was relatively undamaged and still stands today, with the upstream face largely buried beneath the landslide. Although the communities (the largest of which was Longarone) have been rebuilt, they are very different places than before the disaster. Many of the survivors were relocated to a newly built town 35km away, also called Vajont¹, and the valley is now home to many more industries. Apparently this has been a source of controversy in the area: the victims were offered tax breaks by the government to help them rebuild their lives, but many of these privileges ended up being bought from them by large corporations.

Not long after the disaster, it became clear that it had been avoidable. During construction of the dam, cracks and movement of the mountainside were noticed on several occasions, and the owners (the electricity firm SADE) were warned that the geology of the site was unstable. Still they went ahead with filling the lake, even after a smaller landslip occurred, three years before the fatal collapse, which required an artificial gallery to be built before filling could continue. Despite all that emerged, it seems that the firm escaped with fairly minor punishment.

There is lots more information and pictures of the dam as it looks today on this site, and, as ever, at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Andrea Barbarino.

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!

If you happen to live in one of the countries¹ in which Pixar has chosen to release their latest movie before now, then you might already have seen their latest 3D rendered movie, Up; in which the protagonist’s home is the last remaining property that stands in the way of enormous modern building developments.²

Unlike in Up however, the real life properties that find themselves in this situation don’t just float away, and their refusal to be moved has earned them the moniker of Nail Houses.

Edith Macefield moved into her home in Seattle in 1966, and in recent years turned down many increasingly large offers from developers looking to build on her land. In the end the developers decided to build the complex anyway, leaving her home boxed in on three sides. In the Street View images we can see the construction underway all around her little home, with her distinctive blue car parked outside visible even from satellite.

Edith sadly died in June last year, but since then her home was actually used as part of a publicity stunt promoting Pixar’s movie, and remains for the moment, as a reminder of what can be achieved by refusing to be steamrolled.

In Washington D.C., a Mr. Austin Spriggs reportedly turned down an offer of 3 million dollars for his property as it was directly in the way of a massive new development. Mr. Spriggs was apparently seeking a loan to open up a pizza restaurant on the premises, but when the Street View car passed, this was clearly still some way from becoming a reality.

It turns out that there are people all over the place who have decided, for the sake of pride, morals, or plain stubbornness, to remain in their homes no matter what. Here’s the home of a man who lives in the car park of the St. Alexius hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota. I wonder if he gets free parking?

Not even the biggest of companies can always get their own way either. At Microsoft’s Redmond West campus there’s one solitary private property, which was apparently left alone under the agreement that the house could stay there until the present owners died.

The phenomenon of “homeowner holdout” isn’t just constrained to private homes either. At Tokyo’s Narita Airport, the proposed layout of the tarmac was completely ruined by several farmers, who steadfastly refused to sell their land to the airport. You can see how the runways weave around the various farms that get in their way, as well as being split into tiny, useless segments by other bits of farmland.

I’m sure that this post only scratches the surface of this topic, so do you know of any nail houses in your area, and what’s the story behind them?

Wikipedia has more info on Nail Houses, and we wrote a story in 2006 about The Man Who Lives in the Middle of the M62. Thanks to Boing Boing and Deputy Dog.

High on green hillsides overlooking the village of Fovant in Wiltshire, a dozen giant logos – some more than 50 metres across – can be seen carved into the chalk.

These designs date back to the first world war, when Fovant and the surrounding villages housed a transit camp for troops en route to and from the battlefields of the Western Front in France. In memory of fallen colleagues (and, no doubt, simply as a huge “Kilroy Was Here“), soldiers from various regiments painstakingly created representations of their cap badges.

Originally, there were many more badges, but nobody is quite sure how many have since faded away beneath the grass. Today, 12 remain, of which eight have been “adopted” for preservation by the Fovant Badges Society (due to lack of funds, four of them will not be saved).

The largest group of badges – nine of them – can be found on Fovant Down (they appear upside down on the aerial photos as they are carved on a north-facing hillside). They represent:

1. The Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry. 2. The YMCA (which was an important provider of welfare services in the transit camps).

3. 6th Battalion, The City of London Regiment. 4. The Australian Imperial Force badge (the “Rising Sun”).

5. The Royal Corps of Signals. 6. The Wiltshire Regiment.

7. The London Rifle Brigade. 8. The Post Office Rifles.

9. The Devonshire Regiment.

All these (with the exception of the YMCA) will be preserved.

Further badges, which sadly will be left to fade away, can be seen on nearby Compton Down and Sutton Down:

10. An enormous map of Australia, carved by unknown soldiers from Down Under. 11. The Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

12. 7th Battalion, City of London Regiment.

Although the transit camps are long gone, there are still signs of a military presence in the area. The excellent Secret Bases website reveals that these mysterious shapes among the trees are the Fovant Wood Ordnance Depot, a munitions storage area for the nearby RAF base at Chilmark. That base closed down in the mid-1990s, although rumour has it that top secret goings-on still occur in and around the disused quarries…

Read more at the Fovant Badges Society website.

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

Volcanoes probably aren’t the first thing you associate with Ethiopia, but Erta Ale is a particularly fine specimen.

It may only be a little over 600 metres high¹, but this volcano (whose name means “smoking mountain” in the local Afar language) is home to a fiery lake of lava – one of only five in the world! Little wonder that it is known locally as the “gateway to hell”. Living near here seems a risky proposition – a large eruption in 2005 killed hundreds of livestock and forced villages to be evacuated, and further eruptions two years later also caused hundreds of residents to flee.

Erta Ale is located in the Afar Depression, which is very geologically active: three “rift zones” (where tectonic plates are being forced apart) meeting nearby. As well as several volcanoes, there’s a multitude of hot springs and incredibly salty lakes.

Just below Erta Ale is the strikingly blue Lake Afrera, which is believed to contain at least 290 million tons of salt, but pales in comparison to Lake Assal, across the border in Djibouti. Assal is the saltiest lake on Earth², with a salinity 10 times greater than that of the ocean.

The region has another red-hot claim to fame. Even away from the boiling lava, it is said to be the hottest place on Earth, in terms of yearly average temperature. The mining community of Dallol (near the volcano of the same name) recorded a mind-boggling average temperature of 34°C between 1960 and 1966, although today it is a ghost town.

The BBC website has an interesting article on the challenges of surveying Erta Ale, including a video of one of the scientist abseiling into the crater. There’s more about the volcano at Wikipedia.