Monuments

On this day, August 6, in 1945 - the first nuclear weapon to be used in war was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb, Little Boy, was released at 8:15 local time by the American B-29 bomber…

This is supposedly the Hokkaidō Centennial Memorial Tower in Nopporo Forest Park, Hokkaidō, Japan. The official site claims it's 100m tall, and was completed in 1970 to honour the 100th anniversary of Hokkaidō's official colonisation1. Of course dear geeky-reader, you…

This is the Homomomomonument, er... we mean the Homomonument, in Amsterdam. Unveiled in 1987, the humorously-named monument serves as a very serious memorial to the many thousands of gay men and women who were murdered during the Second World War.…

Within the Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona, is one of the largest stockpiles of discarded vehicle tyres1 in the US - perhaps as many as 10 million individual tyres. Despite being just south of a town called Goodyear, this is…

Giants have a hard time getting clean. I mean, baths aren't usually built big enough to fit your average giant, right? Which is the only sensible explanation as to why there's a giant sitting in the Guadalquivir river in Córdoba,…

While I don't admit to possess a particularly green thumb, I do have a penchant for anything which either looks good from the air, or lays claim to unnecessary, ambiguous World Records. Just like here at the Royal Botanic Gardens,…