The Tupolev Tu-144 is a supersonic passenger jet built by the Soviet Union as a competitor to the British/French Concorde.

The Tupolev was developed around the same time as Concorde and, with a little help from a spy in France, its appearance is very similar. Due to this, the Western papers of the day gave it the inspired nickname of “Konkordski”¹.

Konkordski 77107 on display at Kazan Aviation Production Complex

Like its namesake, Konkordski wasn’t the aviation success everyone had hoped for, and only 17 were ever built. A disastrous crash in 1973 at the Paris Air show sealed the Konkordski’s fate and they served only 103 domestic flights before being withdrawn from service.

Konkordski 77108 stored at the Samara-Ouchebny Research Institute

Although nowhere near as famous as Concorde, Konkordski did achieve its share of records: it was the first supersonic passenger jet to fly (just 2 months before Concorde) and to this day is still the fastest commercial airliner ever!

More info on the History of Konkordski, full aircraft list and Wikipedia page.

Thanks to Snoogans and Virtual Globetrotting.

There’s something very strange going in Moscow, Russia.

It looks as if a bus has come to a stop right across a motorway, bringing traffic to a complete halt in both directions. There doesn’t appear to be any debris from a crash visible, so what on earth happened here?

Has the bus crashed, or could we actually be witnessing some sort of hostage situation?

Thanks to Jonas Rasmussen.

An Ekranoplan (”surface-plane” in Russian) is a plane-ship hybrid that can skim over the water using the upward force of the WiG (Wing in Ground) effect, which forms a cushion of air under the short but very wide wings. It’s all explained on Wikipedia.

The Soviet Union planned to develop 120 Ekranoplans of the A-90 Orlyonok class, but in the end only 3 were built. When the Americans saw them skimming along the Caspian Sea they could only describe them as “Caspian Sea Monsters”. One of the 3 A-90 Orlyonok class is permanently parked on the edge of the Caspian Sea at the town of Kaspiysk.

The even more bizarre looking craft we see here is the only vessel of her class, a Lun (”Harrier”) MD-160 Ekranoplan, and entered service with the Black Sea Fleet in 1987. It is 74m long with a wingspan of 44m.

Thanks: Ben

This feels a little like ambulance chasing, so in no particular order, here are 9 (possible) traffic accidents.

1. Highway A13 just north of Rotterdam (there’s a couple of vehicles on the hard shoulder, and traffic is backed up for a long way):

2. Belfast Spillage (first pointed out in a different thread, there seems to be some sort of spillage and water vehicles cleaning it up):

3. Traffic backed up in Moscow (definitely something holding up traffic, but it’s unclear that this is an accident):

4. Blue vs. red car in the UK (my vote is for parked cars in this case actually):

5. Central reservation crossed in Australia (there seems to be a lorry in between the carriages and a couple of emergency vehicles to one side):

6. Road rage in Las Vegas (impossible to say how these cars came to rest like this, but there’s definitely people having words in the street!):

7. Dallas Motorway accident (there’s a car on the hard shoulder, traffic creeping past, a truck on the hard shoulder facing the wrong direction, and a couple of unidentified black marks on the road):

8. Burning car, Germany (Car is still on fire and is surrounded by firemen, there’s water staining the motorway, a fire engine and hundreds of backed up vehicles to the north):

9. Jackknifed lorry, Dallas (Dallas again? Lorry appears to have jackknifed across the highway, but it seems traffic is getting past):

We sincerely hope that nobody was seriously injured in any of these incidents.

Thanks to Dirk Thiel, WRA, Wilfred van Breda, gIMpSTa, Matthew Flynn, Ant, Stephan Segraves and Dan.

These are the Diomede Islands, two islands only 3km apart but one is in Russia, the other in the USA. These islands are right in the middle of the Bering Straights and the international dateline runs right in between them. Therefore, you can stand on the eastern island in Alaska and look into “tomorrow” in Russia, pretty trippy.

The Diomede Islands are often mentioned as likely intermediate stops for some kind of bridge or tunnel spanning the Bering Straits, which would be one big and expensive bridge!

Thanks: Adrian & Gut