As the story goes, the original owner of this unwieldy building located in Willow, Alaska built his house shortly after a forest fire with a clear view of Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. As the surrounding trees recovered, the pristine view was obscured and the owner decided to add few more stories, eventually spending a decade adding floors until it reached the 12-ish story tower you see today. Not surprisingly, locals refer to the building as the “Dr. Seuss House” as the design so closely mimics structures you might see in Theodor Geisel’s illustrated storybooks.
Consider the skin on your face. As smooth and peachy as it may look, every square centimetre houses around one or two “demodex spiders”. They mostly lie low, but once you’re asleep they crawl across your face to mate and lay eggs in your pores. Don’t feel too disgusted, though – in return for their food and lodging, these spiders clean away some of the harmful bacteria that might cause a dangerous infection.
The treacherous North Yungas Road runs for less than 44 miles from Bolivia’s foremost city, La Paz, to Coroico in the Yungas. Still, for those drivers who dare to take it, this journey is probably more than long enough.
Construction on the road itself began in the 1930s, but even before that it had an alarming reputation. Indeed, during the 1800s thieves utilized the passage to waylay traders moving their commodities between La Paz and Coroico. The bandits would steal the traders’ wares and likely murder them as well.
The Barkley 100-Mile Marathon, held annually in Frozen Head State Park near Wartburg, Tennessee, is considered to be one of most challenging ultra-marathons in the world. So tough, in fact, that only 14 people out of about 1,100 participants have ever managed to complete it since its inauguration in 1986! That’s just two more than the number of people who have walked on the moon.
The 100-mile run, which some claim is actually 130 miles or more, has a cumulative elevation gain of more than 60,000 feet – the equivalent of climbing mount Everest twice, from sea level. It consists of a 20-mile loop around a mountainous course that participants need to complete five times. Loops three and four need to be run in the opposite direction, with the direction for loop five being the runner’s choice. Experienced runners looking for something less extreme can opt for the 60-mile ‘fun run’, where they have to run the 20-mile loop just three times.
All the quarters, dimes and other coins forgotten by busy travelers at airport security checkpoints last year added up to a big chunk of change for the federal government.
Airline passengers left behind nearly $675,000 in loose change last year, according to the Transportation Security Administration’s 2014 fiscal year report released Monday. While that’s only a modest jump from last year’s haul of $638,143, it’s a whopping 76% more than the $383,414 collected in 2008.
