When your neighbors party late into the night or a garbage truck wakes you up two hours before sunrise, you might curse your neighborhood. We’re not all fortunate enough to have rolling emerald lawns and central air conditioning, but most people reading this have access to the most basic of amenities: heat, running water, electricity, and Internet access. Unfortunately, there are many people throughout the world who are not so blessed—men, women, and children crammed into slums ruled by crime and ravaged by drugs and disease.

10Cité-Soleil, Port au Prince
Haiti

On the outskirts of Port au Prince, Haiti is Cité-Soleil (“Sun City”), a foul slum ruled by gangs and sitting in a pool of its own squalor. Cite Soleil has no sewage system and is composed of hovels. Garbage and excrement sit in stagnant, mosquito-infested puddles. AIDS is prolific, and the life expectancy hovers in the low 50s. There is no police force, and for years, vicious drug lords and kidnappers controlled the streets. According to the Red Cross, “the shanty town of Cité-Soleil is a microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, insanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence.”

In 2004, the United Nations deployed thousands of troops to Cité-Soleil, where they engaged in numerous gun battles with the gangs. Some vague sense of order was restored, but the area remains a hotbed of violence. To this day, one must pass through an armed UN checkpoint to enter the slum. Cité-Soleil weathered Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake well, with many of its structures still standing, but the nearby National Penitentiary was damaged, and 3,000 deadly inmates flooded out in the resulting chaos. They returned to Cité-Soleil with a vengeance, riding motorcycles with assault rifles at the ready. They burned all their arrest records and took back the slum, setting back the progress made by the United Nations.

9 Favelas Of Rio de Janeiro
Brazil

Rio de Janeiro is a beautiful, sprawling city frequently visited by tourists for such events as Carnival and for the white sands of Copacabana Beach. But on the fringes of the city, there exist huge slums called favelas: piecemeal shacks built haphazardly atop each other. The dwellings are tacked together from odds and ends, cast-off bits of lumber, metal, and stone.

Of the approximately 1,000 favelas around the city, one of the most notorious is Rocinha. Rio is a major port for cocaine traffic traveling to Europe, and the favelas are often ruled by heartless drug lords. One of the more colorful characters from the area was Erismar Rodrigues Moreira (street name Bem-Te-Vi, after a Brazilian songbird). His gang carried gold-plated weapons and subjected enemies to “necklacing”— jamming a tire over a man’s head and then setting it aflame. In 2005, Ben was shot down in a police raid. The future of the favelas remains uncertain; since Rio de Janeiro has been accepted as the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics, the authorities have showed an increasing presence in the streets they once ignored.

8Detroit, Michigan
USA

Once heralded as the “Motor City,” Detroit has more recently come to be known as one of the United States’ “Murder Capitals.” The decline of the American automotive industry has left this city reeling. The population has dropped 25 percent since 2000, and many areas have become a wasteland of foreclosed homes, boarded up and selling for pennies on the dollar—some for less than $100. Of course, this is an “as-is, buyer beware” situation if there ever was one. Many of these houses have been taken over by squatters, and the basements of abandoned buildings are a favorite haunt of dog fighters. Detroit has a huge problem with strays; tens of thousands roam the streets, most of them pit bulls.

On July 19, 2013, Detroit declared bankruptcy, approximately $18 billion in debt. Many residents of the city are also feeling the crunch—unemployment rates stand at around 16.3 percent, actually a marked improvement from 2009, when 24.9 percent were out of work. One need look no further to witness Detroit’s crippling poverty than truTV’s hit show Hardcore Pawn, which takes place in the largest pawn shop in the city and often features lines of people out the door trying to peddle their valuables to make rent and keep the lights on. Data compiled from various sources including the FBI and the US Justice Department reveals that the top three most dangerous neighborhoods in America are all located in Detroit. The worst, the area surrounding West Chicago Street and Livernois Avenue is so bad that you have a one in seven chance of becoming the victim of a violent crime there each year.

7Ciudad Juárez
Mexico

Ciudad Juárez sits just south of El Paso, Texas, the two cities separated by the narrow stretch of the Rio Grande. And yet the difference between these two places is like night and day. In the last decade, Ciudad Juárez has become the epicenter of the Mexican drug war. Rival cartels visit horrifying violence upon each other as they battle for turf, corpses stacking up. In 2009, the city was crowned the murder capital of the world, with 130 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In truth, the number is probably much higher, as many people simply vanish, buried in mass graves. Police officers are often either too corrupt or too afraid to leave the station.

It is particularly dangerous to be a woman in Ciudad Juárez; sexual assaults are prevalent, and hundreds of women, many just teenagers, have been murdered since the ’90s. Hundreds more remain missing, victims of domestic violence, the drug trade, or worse—some believe that serial killers roam the streets in abundance, their crimes masked by the chaos around them.

6Medellin
Colombia

During the height of the cocaine trade in the late ’80s, Medellin was the most violent city in the world, with Pablo Escobar’s cartel and paramilitary groups running rampant. Escobar was killed by police forces in 1993 and crime declined significantly. Unfortunately, there are still thousands of murders here each year. In 2009, there were 2,899 homicides (down from an astonishing 6,500 in 1991), many tied to drug trafficking. Other schemes perpetrated by local criminals include extortion and kidnapping. Tourists are frequently targeted, held for ransom and forced to empty their bank accounts through visits to ATMs. Since 2012, there has been increasing violence between two rival cartels (the Office of Envigado and Los Urabeños) as they scrap over territory.

5 Brownsville, Brooklyn
USA

New York City (and Brooklyn in particular) have some sordid corners if one looks hard enough, but Brownsville stands out among the rest. Most of the housing in the neighborhood is made up of projects run by the New York City Housing Authority—huge, low-income apartment buildings where crime is prevalent. While much of New York has been subject to gentrification and tumbling crime rates, Brownsville remains quite dangerous, and possibly the most violent place in the entire city. In this neighborhood, some UPS drivers make their deliveries in the company of an armed guard.

As in many rough areas, much of the crime is related to the drug trade. Luckily, the crack-cocaine epidemic of the ’80s and the ’90s is long over, and things have grown (relatively) more peaceful in the interim, with organized gangs fractured into small fragments of their former power. It can be tough to get by on the streets of Brownsville, and many are forced into making their way with their fists. It is no coincidence at all that this neighborhood was the home of a long list of championship boxers, including Riddick Bowe, Shannon Briggs, Zab Judah, and “Iron” Mike Tyson.

4La Perla, San Juan
Puerto Rico, USA

La Perla is a settlement on the outskirts of San Juan that was once home to a slaughterhouse. Today, it is a shantytown known for the proliferation of drugs, particularly heroin imported from suppliers in South America. About 15 square blocks, the streets of La Perla are often omitted from maps of San Juan to keep tourists from traveling there. Despite the abject poverty, La Perla is quite beautiful in many ways, with multicolored homes, breathtaking views, and its own expanse of Caribbean beach. In 2011, La Perla became the site of a massive police raid, netting 114 drug arrests based on an 18-month investigation by the DEA, the Puerto Rico Justice Department, and several other agencies.

3Ferghana Valley
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan

The dissolution of the Soviet Union made for a great deal of tension as the world’s largest country was chopped into independent republics. More than 20 years later, these hostilities remain, some more bitter than ever before. Few places have seen more violence than the Ferghana Valley, an area split in three by the nations of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Ferghana Valley is a center of Islamic fundamentalism and home to a patchwork of ethnicities who are known to clash viciously. The economy is deeply flawed, and the government corrupt. Hundreds of thousands of refugees wander the streets, and corpses litter the sidewalks.

Perhaps the most savage event in the area occurred on May 13, 2005, when the Uzbek town of Andijan became the site of a horrifying massacre as the military opened fire on a group of protesters massed in the main square, decrying the economy and the policies of Preident Islam Karimov. The government would later claim the body count at 187, but those present allege that over 1,000 were killed, including many women and children. They claim that many of the bodies were buried in secret mass graves as a way of downplaying the true scope of the carnage.

2Kibera, Nairobi
Kenya

Nairobi is the capital of Kenya, founded by the British as a rail depot in 1899. Today, it is one of the most important cities in Africa, but it is not free from turmoil. On the outskirts of the city sits Kibera, one of the world’s worst slums. Like many such places, Kibera is forsaken by the government. Enterprising criminals tap into Nairobi’s power grid, bringing electricity to a few select places, but for the most part the area is dark. Homes are typically mud and concrete huts with dirt floors. The water is mostly polluted, causing typhoid and cholera, and toilet facilities consist of holes dug into the ground and used by hundreds. Women leaving their homes after dark are often raped.

About half of Kibera’s population is unemployed, and to alleviate their crushing boredom, they often partake in cheap drugs—glue-sniffing is a big problem—or drink changaa, a powerful local brew. AIDS spreads like wildfire in Kibera, with women selling their bodies just to make enough money to eat, and orphaned children, often born with the disease, haunt the trash-choked streets.

1Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong
China

Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City was demolished 20 years ago, but it certainly deserves mention. A former Chinese military fort, it became densely populated with squatters in the years following World War II. Inside the walls of the fort, ramshackle high-rises were built largely devoid of creature comforts like heat or running water. In 1987, a survey by the Chinese government indicated there were approximately 30,000 residents inside the tiny 6.5-acre territory—a population density of 3,250,000 people per square mile. As a means of comparison, the city with the highest population density today is Manila, with approximately 111,002 people per square mile.

Greater Hong Kong largely turned a blind eye to activities within Kowloon Walled City. For years, it was governed by the Triads, Chinese mafia members. Police would only enter in large groups. There were high rates of prostitution, gambling, drug use, murders, and opium dens. Only the faintest trace of sunlight filtered down to the muddy streets, and rats proliferated in the ruin. In the early ’90s, the government finally decided to destroy this anarchic slum. An evacuation was ordered, and in March 1993, the demolition began. Today, the area is occupied by Kowloon Walled City Park, a verdant expanse of gardens and monuments.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.

Have you heard of Ebola? It’s this disease from West Africa that only kills people there, right? Unfortunately, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, or the Ebola virus disease (EVD), has been on the planet for decades and might be coming soon to a country near you (if it hasn’t been there already). Ebola is known as a hemorrhagic fever, which plainly means that it can affect major organs, damage blood vessels, and cause severe illness in humans. The deadly hemorrhaging virus has been responsible for over 11,000 deaths reported between 1976 and 2016.^[1]

Recurrent in West Africa and with cases spread all over the world, it seems like EVD is not leaving us anytime soon. Most reported cases of EVD outside of West Africa have been from health workers who have worked in or been based in West Africa. These infections are a result of exposure to the disease from outside their home countries. As a result, the following ten places have had suspected or confirmed EVD cases over the past five years.

10 Lagos, Nigeria

In the summer of 2014, a Liberian-American man flew from Liberia to the city of Lagos in Nigeria. On arrival at the airport, he became violently ill and unfortunately died five days later. Two leading infectious disease doctors who treated him at the hospital also died. This initial EVD case infected a total of 19 people, with seven of them consequently dying.^[2]

The virus was eventually declared contained in October 2014 after 42 days with no new cases. In early 2018, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority urged Nigerian airports to be vigilant in detecting the virus and began thoroughly screening both passengers and crew arrivals from EVD-affected countries.

9 Gulu, Uganda

EVD cases were first reported in Uganda in 2000 and subsequently in 2012, 2014, and 2018. Due to their proximity, it is thought that the cases are linked to the EVD outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan. Statistics show that there have been a total of 425 reported cases of EVD in Gulu, Northern Uganda, resulting in 224 deaths.^[3]

Since early 2018, there has been an increase in suspected EVD cases in Uganda around the northern and eastern regions. These reports are increasing due to the return of EVD in the DRC and Sudan and a rise in refugees fleeing violence. Many cases have been identified as Marburg disease, a “sister” viral hemorrhagic disease of EVD which presents similar patient symptoms, including internal bleeding and vomiting.

8 Mali

In 2014, an EVD-infected man from Guinea traveled to Mali and subsequently died. The infection spread to a further seven people, resulting in a total of six deaths.^[4]

All the same, the response of the health care agencies and Malian government has been championed. There is no need to worry about being infected, as in 2019, Mali has been classified by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a no-go area for citizens from other countries. Only essential travel is advised in most of the country.

7 Glasgow, Scotland

While working in Sierra Leone in 2014, a health worker became infected with Ebola.^[5] She has been noted as one of the most controversial EVD patients, as she was undetected on arrival at Heathrow Airport in London. The attending doctor checked her temperature and noted that it was normal. (It was actually high.) However, the patient soon deteriorated and became ill with the virus after arriving home in Glasgow, causing a nationwide panic. The attending doctor has since been suspended due to faking the details of the patient’s examination.

Since this period, after months of isolation, the patient has recovered from the virus. She has, however, returned to the hospital for rechecks, as the Ebola virus has returned in different parts of her body. Twice more, she was close to death but fully recovered. This case has been noted down in history as one of the worst Ebola cases in the West.

6 Dallas, Texas, US

In 2014, a Liberian who had been visiting family in Dallas, Texas, became unwell with the Ebola virus and soon died in a hospital. It emerged that on arriving from Liberia, he had lied on his airport admission documents about the fact that he had been in close contact with EVD-infected people in West Africa. Subsequently, two nurses who attended to him also contracted Ebola. Fortunately, both the nurses survived.

One of the nurses went on to sue the parent company of the hospital for a lack of personal protective equipment and health and safety measures. This subsequently resulted in a settlement.^[6] It is unknown if she is still working as a nurse.

5 New York, New York, US

An emergency doctor who returned from volunteering with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Guinea in October 2014 became ill just days after getting back to New York. He first went to meet friends and went bowling in the city before locking himself in his flat when he became suspicious of his high temperature. He was then transferred to Bellevue Hospital in New York and put into isolation. Three people who were in close contact with him were also put into isolation for security measures. He eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.^[7]

4 Sardinia

In 2015, a nurse returned to Sardinia after performing three months’ worth of humanitarian aid work in Sierra Leone with the charity organization Emergency. When he began to notice Ebola symptoms, he put himself into isolation and ultimately ended up under quarantine in a specialist hospital in Rome, Italy. The nurse was placed under the care of a doctor who had successful experience treating patients with Ebola and was eventually cured.^[8]

3 Madrid, Spain

A Spanish nurse was infected with EVD while treating an infected patient who had been flown into Spain from West Africa. The EVD patient was a Spanish priest who had been working in Sierra Leone.^[9]

The nurse survived. However, unfortunately, the priest later died. He was the second Spanish priest to die from EVD. The first had been working as a health worker in Liberia.

2 Cornwall, England

In 2014, A Nigerian security guard was tested for Ebola after visiting his family in Nigeria. He was placed in quarantine for three weeks, a fact which made headlines. The man said he felt victimized by the quarantine. Nigeria was declared Ebola-free only two days after his return.^[10]

A Nigerian citizen staying at a Cornish navy base in Cornwall was also quarantined after becoming ill. However, test results identified a rare form of the monkeypox virus, and he was transferred to London for treatment.

1 Saudi Arabia

In 2014, a 40-year-old man returned to Saudi Arabia from a business trip to Sierra Leone. He soon became ill with the Ebola virus and was placed in isolation. He had returned to the country to make a pilgrimage to Jeddah and was stopped so that the disease could not be spread to hundreds of other pilgrims.^[11] He is the only known Ebola victim to have traveled to Saudi Arabia.

World Health Organization experts state that Ebola can be passed through close and direct contact with infected people and through handling infected persons’ body fluids, such as blood and saliva. Health care staff are advised to follow strict precautions to reduce the risk of human-to-human transmission by following outbreak protocols. This includes using personal protective equipment when handling suspected or Ebola-positive patients and moving and disposing of the bodies of Ebola patients safely. Ebola is a deadly virus that can recur in different parts of the body months and years after initial infection and treatment.

So remember to wash your hands and watch out for any cuts if you’re traveling or working in any affected regions in Africa. Be sure to take precautions in countries such as Guinea, Sierra Leone, Libera, Nigeria, Sudan, the DRC, and Uganda during your travels.

Caroline Alice is a freelance writer and English language teacher with an interest in health and infectious diseases. Twitter @carolinealiceb

When the world ends, our cities will crumble and be reclaimed by nature. At least, that’s the popular image. But you don’t need to wait for the apocalypse to see how things will crumble. You don’t even need to leave civilization—there are plenty of glimpses of the post-apocalyptic world hidden right among us.

10Public School 186

It would be impossible for Manhattan’s Public School 186 to be any more in the middle of civilization. Businesses are open across the street, there isn’t a free parking space in sight, and people stroll by nonchalantly. It’s boarded up, but it’s the trees growing out of the windows which give away the fact that no one has used the building for over 40 years. Inside, piles of rubble and scattered animal corpses complete the look.

The school was opened in 1903 but ran into problems in the early 1970s. Its floor plan didn’t meet fire safety codes and the ground floor doors had to remain open at all times to ensure that children couldn’t be trapped. Those open doors soon led to problems. Criminals robbed parents at knifepoint and a teacher’s aide was raped in a classroom. When fire inspectors found that the fire alarm didn’t work in 1972, the school was marked for closure. It shut down in 1975.

The building was due to be renovated in the 1980s, but the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem that bought it decided to demolish the building and start again. Residents petitioned to save the building, but the owners say that it would be too expensive. While they battle it out, the building continues to look increasingly like a set from I Am Legend.

9North Brother Island

Located just half a kilometer (.3 mi) from Manhattan in New York’s East River is a bird sanctuary known as North Brother Island. In the 1880s, people with infectious diseases were quarantined there at the Riverside Hospital. Its most famous resident was Typhoid Mary, who died on the island in 1938. The island later housed veterans from World War II and was the base of a drug treatment center. In 1964, the last people left and it was closed to the public.

A few people have been let back onto the island between September and March when the birds aren’t nesting. Among the thick vegetation that now covers the island are huge brick buildings, bungalows, and a chapel. One classroom still has dozens of old books scattered across the floor. The buildings are all slowly being hidden by trees and ivy.

Christopher Payne, a photographer who was given permission to visit the island, described it as “what would happen if people left the planet.” He described the atmosphere as a sense of being disconnected from the rest of the world, though it turned out to be impossible to forget how close the rest of New York City was. “I could hear the Mister Softee truck sometimes,” he said.

8Miami Marine Stadium

Naumachia were mock naval battles that took place in flooded coliseums in ancient Rome. Gladiatorial combat is a staple of post-apocalyptic fiction (you can thank Mad Max 3). So if you want to host your own dystopian naumachia, Miami’s Marine Stadium is the perfect venue.

The 6,600 seat arena was opened in the 1960s as a venue for speedboat racing. It was closed in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew and has since become a haven for graffiti artists and freerunners. It’s an imposing, poured-concrete structure. The stadium’s designer said that he had intended to create “a piece of sculpture on the water reflecting on what nature was providing us.”

There’s debate over what to do with the stadium. The Friends of Miami Marine Stadium want to see it cleaned up and returned to use. Others believe it should be left as it is, a monument to the graffiti artists who have adopted it over the decades.

7Box Hill Brickworks

Melbourne’s Box Hill Brickworks adds a steampunk theme to its derelict charm. The brick-making plant was built in 1884 and operated for a century. It was closed in 1988, but its brick chimney still towers over the local landscape.

The real charm is hidden inside. Mazes of walkways hover above masses of rusting machinery. There are even hand-written sales records scattered in an old office. The site is a time capsule of technologies. A tramway and blacksmith’s shop are essentially unchanged from the 1880s.

The world-gone-to-hell atmosphere is completed by the landfill on the same grounds. It looks like a normal grassy field—except for the plumes of flame that occasionally burst from the ground. When methane from the buried waste isn’t exploding by itself, local youngsters have been known to drop matches into sinkholes to trigger blasts underground. This all takes place very close to people—the barbed-wire fence for the brickworks borders a park that is usually full of playing children.

6Bloomingdale Railway

If you’ve ever wondered what urban hiking will be like once the end comes, Chicago’s Bloomgindale Railway will give you a fairly good idea. This three-mile-long abandoned railway is elevated above the busy city. After it was abandoned by Canadian Pacific Railway in 2001, its overgrown tracks became popular as a route for joggers and cyclists. In winter, it also offers the unique experience of cross-country skiing through the middle of a busy city where every street is plowed.

The feel of an unattended city isn’t going to be around for much longer, however. Search for Bloomingdale Railway and half the pictures show a train track being reclaimed by nature. The others are artists’ impressions of the mass restoration project that will soon turn the track into a modern park and walkway. While undoubtedly good for Chicago, those who have come to love the railway over the last decade have said that they expect to be nostalgic for the post-apocalyptic landscape.

5Tower Of David

Centro Financiero Confinanzas is an unfinished skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela. Construction began in 1990, but a 1994 banking crisis left it incomplete. The 45-story building has a heliport but lacks elevators, utilities, windows, and railings. Since the 1990s, 3,000 squatters have made their home in the unfinished shell. The “Tower of David,” nicknamed after its chief backer who died in 1993, is now the world’s tallest slum.

Motorcycles are used as taxis to carry people up the first 10 floors, and it’s on foot from there to the 28th. No one lives any higher than that, but it is possible to get to the top. There’s makeshift plumbing and electricity in some areas, but it’s the economy that’s sprung up inside that makes it feel like a set from a dystopian movie. Stores, beauty parlors, daycare centers, and even a dentist cater to the residents. Some apartments look cozy, even if the corridors that lead to them are faded and cracked from disuse.

People salvage metal from the higher floors. Others lift weights just feet away from a dizzying drop with no safety rail. Teenagers use the lights from their cellphones to navigate pitch-black stairways. The community has a bad reputation and the people are wary of outsiders. Yet right outside this little world, the surrounding streets look like a typical modern city.

4Insurgentes 300

Mexico City’s Insurgentes 300 is a building that went to war with the forces of nature. While it’s technically still upright, you couldn’t really say it won the fight. It’s nicknamed the “Canada” building for the 30-meter (100 ft) word that once ran down the side in giant letters. From the outside, it looks like a deteriorating shell, but behind the broken glass there are all sorts of professions that put the building to some sort of use. Every type of criminal—from lawyers and accountants to drug dealers and prostitutes—use Insurgentes 300 alongside dance teachers and screen printers.

It was once home to 420 offices, but half of these have since been converted for use as housing. The building has a 10-degree inclination due to structural damage from an earthquake in 1985. The authorities ordered it evacuated, but the occupants declined and have been fighting to have the structure repaired for 30 years. Instead of maintenance, they’ve received only lawsuits as the building slowly decays around them.

3Red Hook Grain Terminal

The closest thing New York City has to a fortress is perhaps The New York Port Authority Grain Terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Its concrete walls are 20 centimeters (8 in) thick, 12 stories high, and sheer. It’s a behemoth that looks perfect for fending off a hoard of zombies. In fact, a rag-tag bunch of survivors is pretty much all the building is missing to complete its post-apocalyptic look.

Inside, it looks like a cross between a factory, a prison, and a temple. It’s eerie from a distance, and in fog it looks downright sinister. Several pieces have collapsed into the river, and others look destined to follow. New York’s grain economy was already on the decline before the building opened in 1922. It shut down in the 1960s and is known as the “Magnificent Mistake.”

The building is extremely popular with urban explorers, though it’s difficult to get to. One explorer says that it requires research, persistence, and creativity, but mostly nerve, “since you don’t know what you’ll find inside or who might stop you before you make it in, and the repercussions that come with that.” Even if you’re not interested in the building, the journey may be worth it purely for the amazing sunset you can watch from one of the many shattered windows.

2The UK’s Cold War Tunnels

England doesn’t have an official second city, but Manchester and Birmingham are the most commonly suggested candidates. That’s perhaps why each of them is home to miles of underground tunnels built during the Cold War. They’re very literally a glimpse of the apocalypse, since that’s exactly what they were built to withstand. They were also built in secret.

The bunkers under Manchester were tunneled by Polish workers who couldn’t speak English so that they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what they were doing. It once housed several months’ worth of tinned food designed to keep VIPs alive in case of an attack. In Birmingham, many of the entrances to their system remain classified.

1A Lot Of Meatpacking Plants

Founded in 1867, Armour & Company was once one of the United State’s largest meatpacking companies. It fell into decline in the late 20th century, and in its wake it left abandoned plants all over the country. One is a skeletal brick building in Fort Worth, Texas, which was ravaged by fires in the 1970s. Demolition was attempted and there’s a section of wall missing.

It turned out that the building’s steel structure was so strong that it was cheaper to just leave the rest standing. Today, it looks like a prison. Guard towers were added in 2007 to make the plant look like a South American prison for the show Prison Break. The words Penitenciaría Federal De Sona were left above one of the doors.

Another meatpacking plant in Navassa, North Carolina was only open for a few years. Rumors began in the 1920s that the plant’s owner was found hanged in the middle of the factory. The building earned a reputation as haunted. Several people committed suicide there in the 1980s, cementing its supernatural foothold in local folklore.

Yet perhaps the most famous abandoned meatpacking plant is in East St. Louis, Illinois. It’s not far from downtown and has the added bonus of still being filled with old machinery. That includes its once cutting-edge refrigeration system. The plant once employed nearly 5,000 people and became a hotbed of racial tension due its segregated workforce. Since it was closed in 1959, it’s become an infamous beacon for those fascinated with the way the world crumbles.

Alan is tempted to take up urban exploration as it’s the only hobby that’s going to get better should the world end.

Abandoned places are captivating, as they often give us a direct glimpse of what life must have been like in the past. There are some locations that seem as if they are places that time forgot, as if life has ceased to exist.

10Tkvarcheli, Georgia

This Soviet ghost town is technically located within a country called The Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, which is only officially recognized by five other countries. To the rest of the world, these are just the remains of another Georgian town that supplied the Soviet industrial machine.

The town was constructed back in the 1940s to supply coal to the Soviets. As such, it was built to last long into the future. However, during the war of independence in the early 1990s, the town fell to Georgian forces. Tkvarcheli was occupied by the Georgians for more than a year, until Abkhaz forces reclaimed the town with the help of the Russians.

Sadly for the town, it was too late, as the Soviet era was already in decline. The population of the town steadily dwindled until it was eventually abandoned for good. Nowadays, it serves as a creepy reminder of life at the height of the Soviet Union.

9Hashima Island, Japan

At first glance, it’s not hard to see why this island was nicknamed “Battleship Island.” Approached from the water, it really does look like a giant concrete battleship, thanks to its high sea walls. But the history behind this small island isn’t nearly as pretty as its panoramic views.

Hashima was a coal mining town from 1887–1974, which aided in the industrialization of Japan. Naturally, mining is back-breaking work, so the demand for workers was high. By 1959, there were 5,259 miners living on the island, crammed into just 16 acres of land. As one of the most densely populated areas in the world, living conditions soon declined to prison-like levels.

In the 1960s, petroleum started to replace coal. Many mines throughout Japan were shut down shortly thereafter, including Hashima in 1974. Within a matter of weeks, one of the most densely populated places on Earth was deserted, and the island was left to rot and weather the elements.

8Kitsault, Canada

The town of Kitsault sits in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It featured more than 100 homes, 200 apartments, a hospital, a shopping mall, a movie theater, a sports center, and a bank. What more could you ask for this far up north? The only missing thing is the people.

The town formed in 1979 around the steel production industry after a molybdenum source was found nearby. For a while, all was well, but the town’s fate was sealed when the price of molybdenum crashed. As a result, the mine was shut down, and by 1983, Kitsault had turned into a ghost town almost overnight.

The town may possibly have found a saving grace, however, in the form of an entrepreneur who bought the place for $5 million in 2004. He hopes to resurrect the town from its slumber, but only time will tell if the plan is successful.

7The Parisian Time Capsule Apartment

Time capsules are always fascinating, as they provide a direct, unobstructed view into the past. Although most time capsules found nowadays are intentional, it’s exciting to stumble upon accidental ones like this amazing apartment in Paris.

In the 1940s, the apartment was owned by a Mrs. De Florian, who fled south just before World War II broke out. She left her apartment locked, never to return again, which is how it remained for 70 years. After De Florian passed away, the apartment was finally opened for her heirs to take inventory. Underneath layers of cobwebs and dust, everything was found just as De Florian had left it, including a stunning painting of a woman dressed in pink.

Along with this painting, the inventory team also found a couple of old love letters, which were neatly wrapped in ribbon. Most love letters are only interesting to the people who sent or received them, but these ones were much more than pretty words on paper—they were confirmed to have been written by Giovanni Boldini, who was one of the most influential painters of the Belle Epoque. He was the artist behind the painting, which depicted De Florian’s grandmother, a high-society French actress and courtesan. The painting was later sold for a staggering 2.1 million Euros ($2.85 million USD).

6The Buzludzha Monument, Bulgaria

Although at first glance, this structure looks like a giant concrete saucer on top of a mountain, Buzludzha is actually a monument dedicated to communism. The story behind its inception goes all the way back to 1891, when Bulgaria’s socialist faction met on this exact spot to discuss Bulgaria’s future. Construction began in 1974, and the building was richly decorated with an abundance of Bulgarian and Soviet symbols, including a series of colorful mosaic frescoes on the walls. Perhaps the most impressive feature of the Buzludzha Monument is the colossal hammer and sickle in the middle of the dome ceiling.

Sadly, this beautiful building eventually fell to squalor, as the Bulgarian communist party disbanded following a revolution in 1989. Ownership of the monument was transferred to the government, which simply sealed off the main entrance and left it to be ravaged by vandalism and the elements.

5Doel, Belgium

The town of Doel is 700 years old, but in an effort to expand the nearby harbor, the Belgian government scheduled the town for demolition and forced its residents to move. Subsequently, Doel turned into a ghost town, silently awaiting its demolition. The few citizens who refused to leave took an unusual stand against their predicament, bringing in street artists from all over Europe and encouraging them to turn Doel into their personal canvas as a form of protest.

The end result was spectacular, as the walls of the all-but-abandoned town transformed into a life-size living art gallery. The contrast between the old, historic buildings and the layers of modern graffiti that adorn them is breathtaking. Only 25 residents remain in this post-apocalyptic artistic paradise, and their future in Doel looks bleak. Demolition is still on the horizon, and they’ll all have to leave once the wrecking ball comes.

4Coco Palms, Hawaii

Known as the setting for the classic film Blue Hawaii, the island resort of Coco Palms is anything but a tropical paradise. The resort opened in 1953, and thanks to some marketing for the film Miss Sadie Thompson by MGM, business did not take long to pick up. However, once Elvis Presley arrived to film the instant hit Blue Hawaii, the resort became a runaway success. Couples from all over the globe, including A-list celebrities, wanted to spend their vacations and honeymoons on Elvis’s island nirvana.

For a few decades, it appeared that Coco Palms was here to stay, but in 1992, it fell victim to Hurricane Iniki. Most of the island was badly hit, and the resort couldn’t escape the colossal repair bills. Many insurance companies went bankrupt in the aftermath of the storm, so many repairs could not even be performed. This sent the whole island into a recession, from which the resort would never recover.

Still in tatters from the storm, the property was soon overtaken by vandals and thieves. Cottage 56, the suite where Elvis stayed, was an especially popular target. Although many redevelopment and restoration plans have been proposed, the resort is still a long way from recapturing its glory days.

3Two Guns, Arizona

The story behind Two Guns, originally called Canyon Lodge, is a sad one. It all started in the 1920s, when the infamous Route 66 gained massive traffic from adventurous travelers. Many of these travelers stopped for supplies at Canyon Lodge, which was just a small trading post run by Earle and Louise Cundiff at the time. The town’s success quickly caught the attention of the entrepreneur Harry “Two Guns” Miller, who recognized the the vast amounts of wealth to be gained there. He convinced the Cundiffs to lease him the site for 10 years and renamed the town. Under Miller’s command, the town was transformed into a full-blown tourist trap, complete with its own zoo and attractions.

One of these so called “attractions” was a nearby canyon, which was the site of a battle between the Apaches and the Navajos. Inside the canyon was a cave called the Apache Death Cave, which served as a tomb for 42 Apache men. Although the cave’s backstory is fascinating in its own right, Miller decided that it wasn’t intriguing enough for his tourists. He renamed it “Mystery Cave,” built fake ruins, sold the Apache skulls as souvenirs, and perhaps most egregiously, added a soda stand.

The town soon fell victim to a major robbery, which made relations between Miller and the Cundiffs very tense, culminating in a heated argument during which Miller shot Earle Cundiff dead. Incredibly, Miller was acquitted at trial, but shortly thereafter, he was attacked twice by mountain lions and bitten by a Gila monster. This trail of bad luck finally reached a tipping point in 1929, when a fire burned down the whole town. After losing a court battle with Louise Cundiff to keep the land, Miller left. Route 66 was rerouted to the opposite canyon, and Two Guns slowly faded into obscurity, its golden days long behind it.

2The Cinema At The End Of The World

In the middle of the Sinai desert lies a mysterious cinema that never saw an audience. Information about this place is very scarce, and it leaves us with more questions than answers.

The oddly situated setup was built by a French film buff named Diynn Eadel in the 1990s. Somehow, Eadel managed to secure the necessary building permits and convinced Parisian investors to buy seats and projectors from the old theaters of Cairo. The resulting arrangement, which would seat 700 people, sadly never saw an opening night, and no one seems to know why. The theater might have gone unnoticed for years had it not gathered attention from the media recently after it was vandalized and destroyed, most likely for scrap metal.

1Salton Riviera, California

Looking as if it came straight out of a post-apocalyptic world, the Salton Riviera is one of the most awe-inspiring locations on Earth. It was built around the Salton Sea, the largest body of water in California, which was amazingly created by accident when a flood poured in from the Colorado River over the course of two years at the turn of the century.

Many thought that the floodwater would eventually dry out, but years went by seemingly without a drop of evaporation. Developers soon recognized the opportunity the lake presented and built a full-fledged resort upon it, advertised as the “Miracle in the Desert.” The Salton Sea, as it had been named, became the French Riviera of California. Tourists flocked to the resort from all over the country, and many even settled down in a place that had once been uninhabitable desert.

However, this paradise would not last forever. Since the lake was only fed by agricultural runoff, the water became increasingly saltier over the years. Millions of dead fish floated to the surface of the lake, whose white sandy beaches were soon covered in their bones. All the tourists fled from the town, which had become overpowered by the stench of rotten fish. Almost overnight, the Salton Riviera was abandoned, left to become the toxic wasteland that it is today.

I’ve decided to take the plunge and start writing my own lists. You can send your comments and suggestions here.

Everyone has heard of the world’s most famous slums: Hell’s Kitchen, Skid Row, most of Detroit, etc. But there are slums everywhere, even in the last places you would expect to find urban decay. Sometimes, the causes of the deplorable conditions found there are also unexpected.

10Vancouver, British Columbia’s Downtown Eastside

Consistently voted one of the world’s best cities to live in by travel magazines, Vancouver is known for its scenic views and beautiful architecture. Just east of Main Street, however, lies one of the very worst examples of urban squalor in the modern day.

The downtown eastside is the poorest urban postal code in all of Canada. It’s home to thousands of drug addicts, many of whom are HIV-positive. Weirdly enough, many of those afflicted with the deadly disease are huddled within an 18-block radius. Hepatitis C cases are also too numerous to count. The thriving Hastings Street Market, where stolen goods are openly sold, operates along the main drag.

Theft, prostitution, murder, and mental illness plague the district, and the homeless and disenfranchised can be found everywhere within the blighted area. The infamous Robert Pickton found most of his victims in this area, as the transient nature of its population made them easy targets.

Despite massive efforts at renewal and clean-up over the years, conditions on the eastside only seem to get worse. Many continue to fall into the drug-riddled lifestyle surrounding them, only to disappear within a few years and never be heard from again. An excellent documentary about the truly horrific conditions of the downtown eastside called Pain and Wastings was made in 2008.

9Canada Real, Madrid

Over 16 kilometers in length, Canada Real Galiana is Europe’s largest shantytown, home to over 30,000 people. Situated right next to Madrid’s garbage incineration site, the area’s residents can often be seen picking through the refuse to scrounge up usable goods to resell or use themselves.

Most of the homes in the area were built by the residents themselves, often from whatever scraps of wood and metal they could find within the desolation. The area is Spain’s drug capital, and a busy stretch of the only paved road is known as a “shooting gallery,” where all sorts of illegal substances can be bought. The people who have the misfortune to call this area home are trapped, receiving no assistance and no official recognition from their government.

Spanish authorities have even taken steps to demolish the area entirely, knocking down the homes of people who have known no other way of life. Left with no resources and nowhere to go, these people simply raid the demolition sites where the scraps of their previous homes are dumped and rebuild what was torn down. Should they have no luck, they are often left to squat in the hole in the ground where their home once was.

Local social workers often try to help the residents but have to do so on their own time and with little notice, as the area is essentially “no man’s land” in the eyes of the government. Only a few dozen people try to reach out to the families of this slum, and due to its bulging population, help is scarce indeed. For now, the area is seen only as a problem to be concealed if not eradicated.

8Colonias in Texas

Found in various parts of Texas and the American Southwest, the communities that form the sprawling shantytowns known as colonias consist mainly of Hispanic people. Some have come from Mexico to America seeking a better life, while others have been born in the colonias and know nothing else of the outside world. Just under 2,300 of these makeshift communities exist along the border and around the state, home to an estimated 500,000 people. Since the majority of those who live in these communities are undocumented residents and transient in nature, getting an official headcount is nearly impossible.

Most of these communities sprang up in the 1950s, rising from plots of land that were sold to desperate immigrants looking for a better life. For the most part, these poor communities remain as they were initially formed: shantytowns with no real infrastructure. In some communities, well-built homes equipped with running water and electricity can be found, but this type of dwelling is still very rare. The residents eke out meager livings as farm laborers or construction hands.

To their credit, the American government and legislators in Texas have both proposed laws protecting these communities and provided them with resources. Unfortunately, the overwhelming scale of the task and complications of carrying it out still prove challenging.

7Mahwa Aser, Yemen

Found next to Sana’a, the capital city of Yemen, the area known as Mahwa Aser is one of the poorest and most dangerous on Earth. Home to the Akhdam, a people of African descent who are treated as second-class citizens in Yemeni society, the area serves almost as a prison to its 17,000 residents. They are barred from all civil service in Yemen, cannot vote, and have almost no rights.

This leaves them trapped in conditions few Westerners could even imagine. There is no sewage system, electricity, arable land, or real infrastructure in the area, and they are left to either beg for whatever the goodwill of their fellow man will provide or work as street cleaners in the nearby capital.

During the famous “Arab Spring” that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in recent years, the Akhdam people took advantage of the spirit of the times to stage a number of strikes and protests, only to face the full might of Yemen’s military. Hundreds of protestors were killed by military forces, and it was only after a massive strike by the street cleaners that some concessions were made by the government to build infrastructure and homes in the area.

Unfortunately, not much was done to permanently change the slum’s conditions. To this day, an entire ethnic group of people, unknown to almost everyone in the outside world, faces not only endless squalor but the continued wrath of their own government.

6The Cage Slums Of Hong Kong, China

Sometimes, living in poverty can feel like a prison, but there are people in this world who live in literal cages. Amazingly, they can be found in Hong Kong, one of China’s most prosperous cities.

An estimated 200,000 people live in such conditions in the city. Some of the cages are stacked on top of each other, 10 cages high or more. Some of the people who call these places home have lived there for decades, and some were even born into the lifestyle. Life within these homes offers no protection from the weather, no sense of privacy, and a constant atmosphere of noise and pollution.

A small step up from the “cage homes” are the “coffin homes,” which are little more than sleeping spaces hollowed out from a building’s walls, where 25 or more people may live. Those who dwell in cage or coffin homes may see themselves as the lucky ones in the Hong Kong slums. Those who cannot afford a home of any kind are forced to sleep under bridges or directly on the streets.

For decades, the situation of these slums has only gotten worse, thanks to inadequate social systems, high real estate prices in the extremely crowded city, and the unscrupulous landlords who are willing to rent unsuitable living spaces to the desperate and needy. The list of applicants for subsidized housing numbers in the hundreds of thousands, many of whom die from their horrible living conditions before they get the opportunity to live a normal life. Unfortunately, the problem of poverty in Hong Kong is now so massive, with more and more impoverished new residents moving in every day, that there seems to be no solution.

5City Of The Dead, Cairo

Unbelievable in modern times, an actual necropolis exists in Egypt, known as the “City of the Dead.” Known to have existed for over 700 years, Cairo is so overcrowded that about 500,000 of its 18 million residents are forced to live among the tombs of their ancestors. The number of dead “residents,” an estimated one million tombs within an area spanning 6.5 kilometers (4 mi), is also staggering.

The houses themselves appear almost normal, with kitchens, courtyards, and even gardens. In the tombs, men and women are buried separately, each grave simply covered with a stone slab. However, electricity is rare, there is virtually no police force or security of any kind, and the streets connecting the various homes are unpaved and confusing. Crime is rampant, and many residents live among the dead illegally, though the Egyptian government does very little to enforce property laws.

The future of the people living this modern-day city of the dead remains uncertain. The Egyptian government is taking steps to relocate its residents, but since real estate is so expensive in Cairo and accurately recording and tracking the slum’s residents is tricky, the task seems nearly impossible. For now, steps to provide more of the residents with running water and electricity seem to be the only positive action that the government is able to take.

4The Tent Cities Of Seattle, Washington

Tent cities spring up all over from time to time, but in Seattle—especially in an area known as “Nickelsville”—they seem to be a permanent fixture. Around 275 people call these makeshift communities home, not counting the hundreds more who “camp out” each night only to pull up their stakes and disappear the next morning. Whether permanent or temporary, all of the residents are poor and most are unskilled, with little in the way of job prospects or hope of a better life.

In the 1970s, a series of tragic fires led to the closure of several complexes of cheap and secure housing units known as “SROs” (Single Room Occupancy), which forced many of Seattle’s less fortunate onto the streets. This new breed of Seattle’s homeless are forced to live in constant fear of arrest for illegally camping. The only solution they had was tent cities, in which an individual can pack up and move on if needed in less than one minute. Safety and security are minimal within these places, and electricity and sanitation are nonexistent. The people who call these places home live hand to mouth, sometimes even hunting local wildlife for food.

It seems the residents of these dwellings have little hope for improvement, at least for now. Seattle came up with a 10-year plan to eliminate homelessness within the city over a decade ago, obviously to little effect, and police within the city mostly treat tent city residents as criminals. Fortunately, some members of the public have been kind enough to drop off donations and advocate for a better solution than merely herding them around.

3Paris, France

The city of romance hides a dark secret just a 10-minute train ride away. An area known as La Courneuve has been labeled by the local police as a “no-go zone,” one of 150 that dot the French landscape, mostly around Paris.

La Courneuve and other makeshift communities like it sprang up with a wave of Middle Eastern and Roma immigration during the middle of the 20th century that authorities at the time were too slow to deal with. As a result, the children of these people, and their children after them, grew up as generally unrecognized citizens within their own country. This attitude and the residents’ dissatisfaction with their living conditions have sparked massive riots throughout the last decade.

Although the rage of their impoverished citizens has subsided for the most part, little has changed within the worst parts of Paris. Since most residents have no hope of employment due to a combination of racism and a lack of available jobs, they spend their days getting high and outwitting corrupt police officers looking to arrest them so they can use the drug themselves or resell them. The area is, as one resident put it, entirely gray. “The buildings are gray. The people are gray. Everything is gray. It’s the same people, and there is nothing to do, nothing to do. You wake up every morning looking for work. But why? There isn’t any.”

2Hollywood, California

In the place where dreams are made, some are forced to live in places straight of your worst nightmare. Countless hopefuls flee to the city every year to make it big in the world of show business, but maybe if they saw firsthand the living conditions of La-La Land’s less fortunate, they would turn back in horror.

Famous for its Skid Row, Los Angeles now has more slums within Hollywood itself than its more well-known cousin. They began to appear with the boom of the movie industry and only grew worse from there, with the advent of “B-movies” and the pornography industry in the 1970s increasing the number of poor flocking to the city exponentially. Some buildings hold hundreds of residents in conditions that seem unlivable. The usual parade of drugs, prostitution, crime, and despair can be found within Hollywood’s worst areas, magnified by the more unprincipled members of the film industry who seek to con those seeking a shot at stardom out of their meager savings.

Although recent efforts by local residents have won some concessions in restoring grandeur to the area, both city officials and residents agree that it is a losing battle. It seems that as soon as one building is condemned or demolished, another springs up in its place. As thousands of fame- and fortune-seekers come to the city unprepared every year, the stars in their eyes overtake the plans in their head, leading to a problem that is growing like a cancer within one of America’s most cherished national treasures.

1Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Dubai seemed like a miracle to most outsiders until the worldwide financial meltdown of 2008, after which its ugly side was exposed for all to see. The city that boasts some of the world’s most expensive buildings also houses some of the world’s worst slums.

Less than 1 percent of Dubai’s population is native-born, and many of these foreigners are unable to legally obtain citizenship. In the government’s effort to retain some semblance of cultural identity, laws that should apply to everyone are biased in favor of those who were born there.

As such, countless thousands of workers who came to the country for jobs found themselves impoverished after the 2008 collapse, with no social safety net and no other recourse but to settle in areas that the city would rather you didn’t know about. Although actual statistics on some of the worst areas are hard to find due to government interference, pictures speak a thousand words.

The sad fact is that most of modern Dubai was built from slave labor, mostly by immigrants from Pakistan and India who came to the country for work only to end up in one of Dubai’s well-hidden slums, or worse yet, the many labor camps that have popped up around construction projects. These people are Dubai’s forgotten, left to fend for themselves in a city where they remain unwelcome even though they helped construct it.

Damien B. is a part-time writer and basketball lover who is interested in history, politics, crime, and of course, basketball.

Sci-fi gives us the strangest, most memorable places in all of fiction. Whether it’s the sky-high city of The Empire Strikes Back, the gritty streets of Blade Runner, or the desert kingdoms of Dune, sci-fi always immerses its fans into incredibly unique worlds. It seems a shame that these places are just made-up—no matter how hard you wish, you’ll never end up on Gallifrey or aboard Serenity.

But if you know where to look, you’ll find plenty of real-life places that look like they were dreamed up by George Lucas or Philip K. Dick. There’s the apocalyptic Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic, the flying saucer–shaped Buzludzha Monument in Bulgaria, and the depressing dystopia of the Tower of David. And then there are the following places, some creepy, some gorgeous, some downright weird, and all looking ripped straight out of a sci-fi story.

10New York’s Floating Cities

From the Nautilus to Snowpiercer, sci-fi has long loved tricked-out vehicles. They’re moving cities, sustaining life wherever they go, and while they don’t exist (yet), a couple of ships off the coast of New York City are the next best thing.

More Silent Running than Waterworld, the Science Barge is operated by the NY Sun Works, a group dedicated to building sustainable greenhouses. Drifting in the Hudson River, the ship is a farm on the water. Totally self-sustaining, it relies on wind and solar energy for its power, vegetable oil for its heat, and rainwater for its crops. So when the apocalypse starts, this is the place you want to be, especially if you’re a salad fan.

A much scarier ship is floating near the Bronx in Long Island Sound. Resembling a fortress made of oversized Legos, the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center is the world’s largest prison ship, housing 800 felons in medium to maximum security. Built to relieve overcrowding on Rikers Island, this $161 million vessel boasts 100 cells, a law library, and a basketball court on top of the ship.

9The Glow-In-The-Dark Highway

We’re always trying to build the car of the future. Strangely, none of us think about road on which this car will drive—none of us but Daan Roosegaarde. This Dutch artist figured it was time to advance highway technology. Inspired by bioluminescent jellyfish, Roosegaarde created the world’s first glow-in-the-dark road.

Working with the civic engineering firm Heijmans, Roosegaarde converted Highway N329 in Oss into a radiant roadway. The road’s paint is made from photo-luminizing powder, which captures sunlight during the day and lets off a light-green glow at night. When you drive in the dark, the stripes along the road take the place of streetlights. Roosegaarde hopes this 500-meter (1,600 ft) stretch of highway outside Amsterdam will save energy, and he wants other countries to follow his lead.

However, Roosegaarde isn’t anywhere near finished with his project. Next, he wants to use his glow-in-the-dark powder to create weather symbols that show up on the street. For example, he might paint a snowflake that lights up when the weather gets cold, warning drivers about snowfall or ice on the roads. Right now, these icons are still in the development phase, but if the paint on N329 can stand up to the daily onslaught of cars, perhaps Roosegaarde’s powder will revolutionize the way we drive at night.

8Gardens By The Bay

Judging by box office numbers and online movie reviews, it seems there are two kinds of people in the world: those who loved Avatar and those who hated it with every fiber of their being. But regardless of your opinion on the storytelling of James Cameron’s space epic, Pandora looks like a lovely place to visit—if you wipe out those rhino monsters and wolf creatures, anyway. Unfortunately, Pandora doesn’t actually exist, a sad reality that left some film fans with suicidal thoughts.

While those people probably need counseling, less hardcore fans can satisfy their Avatar obsession with a trip to the Gardens by the Bay. Located in central Singapore, this amazing park is the closest thing we have to a luminescent alien forest, thanks to the 18 supertrees that dominate the landscape. These artificial giants measure 25–50 meters (80–160 ft), and while they don’t sport any vegetation of their own, they’re covered in 200 different species of ferns and flowers. Eleven of these steel trees contain photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into energy for the rest of the park. The trees also collect their own rainwater, are interconnected with bridges, and light up in the dark.

Elsewhere in the park are the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, enormous biomes that house over 200,000 different plants, including olive groves, baobabs, and fynbos. These modern-day arks are climate-controlled and generate their own power by processing horticultural waste in steam turbines. Looking at pictures of Gardens by the Bay, you get not only an Avatar-vibe but a sense of technology and nature merging in the best possible way.

7The National Radio Quiet Zone

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope is truly a special piece of equipment. Located in the eastern half of West Virginia, this telescope is the size of the Washington Monument, weighs 8 million kilograms (17 million lb), and takes up 8,000 square meters (2 acres) of land. This observatory wasn’t made for stargazing. Instead, Green Bank tunes into the music of the universe. A radio telescope, this giant wiry dish listens to radio waves from faraway stars and galaxies.

By the time extraterrestrial energy reaches the Earth, it’s weaker than a snowflake tumbling to the ground. To pick up these faint frequencies, the telescope is extremely sensitive. Anything that generates radio waves is either banned from the Green Bank base or highly controlled. Even the cafeteria microwave is kept inside a special, shielded cage.

Scientists took extra steps to block outside electronic pollution. In 1958, the Federal Communications Commission declared the 34,000 square kilometers (13,000 sq mi) surrounding Green Bank to be a “National Radio Quiet Zone.” Roughly the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined, the Quiet Zone is a huge chunk of land almost completely free of cell phones and Wi-Fi. All power lines are buried 1.2 meters (4 ft) below the ground, people use dial-up telephones and ham radios, and every radio station but one (which broadcasts at a low frequency) is banned. There’s even a group of radio wave police who arm themselves with antennas and track down any rogue interference.

Blocking 21st-century technology from the region is getting harder and harder, but for now, the National Radio Quiet Zone is a throwback to a 1950s way of life—with a sci-fi space dish at the center.

6The Soviet Lightning Machine

Hidden away in the forests outside Moscow is a strange collection of tubes, coils, and wires. It looks abandoned now, but gigantic gadgets such as this were built to make lightning—a lot of lightning.

The Soviets built this Marx generator decades ago, and it’s said to have produced as much power as all other generators in Russia. That’s more power than every nuclear, thermoelectric, and hydroelectric plant combined, though Marx generators can only run for a small fraction of a second at a time.

The Russians used the crazy contraption to test materials’ resistance to lightning strikes. For example, they once reportedly shocked a Sukhoi Superjet.

5Rjukan, Norway

For over a century, the citizens of Rjukan lived in the dark. Founded in the early 1900s by Sam Eyde, the village was built for people working in his Norsk Hydro factories. Rjukan is totally surrounded by mountains, so from mid-September to early March, the town was completely covered by gloomy shadow.

The locals weren’t pleased with their situation, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. Sam Eyde tried to compensate by building a cable car to carry people to the top of the mountain. During those dismal months, it was the only way anyone could spend a few minutes basking in the sunlight. After all, you couldn’t actually bring sunlight into the valley—at least not until Martin Anderson showed up.

A traveling artist, Anderson built three solar-powered heliostats on top of the mountain. Sitting 450 meters (1,500 ft) above Rjukan, these computer-operated mirrors track the Sun as it travels across the sky and reflect the light down into the town square, creating 600 square meters (6,500 sq ft) of beautiful light for Rjukan’s sunlight-starved citizens.

Rjukan isn’t the only town that relies on mirrors for sunlight. Viganella, Italy uses a single steel mirror to warm its town, but while it captures more sunlight, it isn’t as strong as Rjukan’s sci-fi heliostats.

4Hong Kong’s AI Metro

With an on-time record of 99.9 percent, the Hong Kong subway is the best in the world. Its success is thanks to a computer program created by Hong Kong engineer Andy Chun. Using a special algorithm, his program quickly calculates the best way to keep the trains running, and it’s way more efficient than any feeble-minded human.

Each week, 10,000 workers keep the tracks in tip-top shape. Night after night, they descend into the tunnels after the trains stop running, and they only have a few hours to carry out 2,600 engineering jobs per week. Before the computer program came along, experts had to hurriedly plan who would go where and do what, and it took far too long. Then Chun’s program changed everything.

After interviewing numerous engineering experts, Chun transformed their wisdom into a series of rules for his AI. Before the repair teams get busy, the AI pores over a model of the subway system and identifies what needs to be done. Next, it compares solutions against one another until it finds the best way to accomplish everything neatly and quickly. It even knows to check its plans against city regulations to make sure everything is safe and legal.

Chun’s AI is so effective that it cuts out two days’ worth of planning a week and gives workers an extra 30 minutes each night to fix up the tracks, saving the metro $800,000 per week. With a program this efficient, it might not be long before computers are running the subway entirely—and as sci-fi fans know, that’s probably not going to end well.

3The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex

Take a road trip across North Dakota, and you’ll see whole stretches of vast, grassy nothing. But pass through the sleepy little town of Nekoma, and you’ll spot something incredibly bizarre and totally alien rising up out of the ground: a giant concrete pyramid.

While it’s missing the pointy top we associate with Egyptian pyramids, this obelisk makes up for its flat roof with four creepy eyes. There are two circles on each side of the pyramid, one inside the other, almost like a pupil inside an iris. And if you drive up closer, you’ll find the pyramid is surrounded with checkpoints and buildings such as an office, a church, and a gym. But chances are good that you won’t pay too much attention to this abandoned community. You’ll probably just stare at the pyramid. What is this thing, and what is it doing in the middle of nowhere?

The focal point of the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, this misplaced monolith was constructed back in the 1970s. Costing a whopping $6 billion, this concrete pyramid was made for one purpose—to watch out for incoming Soviet missiles. Those creepy eyes on all four sides of the pyramid were radars watching the skies for sneak attacks. And if the Russians ever did launch a nuke, officials inside the pyramid would shoot it down with one of their Spartan anti-ballistic missiles.

In addition to silos all over the complex, a massive labyrinth of tunnels ran under the pyramid itself. And in true bureaucratic fashion, the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex was operational for less than a year. After it opened in April 1975, the government started worrying about safety issues, so in February 1976, they flooded the tunnels and shut the whole thing down. So, that was $6 billion down the drain.

The pyramid was later bought for $530,000 by the Spring Creek Hutterite Colony, an Amish-like community of pacifists.

2Americana, Sao Paulo

Alternative history is one of the biggest sci-fi subgenres. These stories deal with the big “what ifs” of history. Take for example Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in High Castle, which asks, “What if the Nazis had won World War II?” Similarly, quite a few wonder, “What would’ve happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?” Well, if you’re curious, you can head on down to Americana, Sao Paulo and find out.

After Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, sore losers in the South weren’t crazy about rejoining the US. Sensing their frustration, Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil invited irate Southerners to pack up their bags and move even further south. Ten thousand people accepted his offer, and while most eventually went back home, 40 percent stayed in Brazil and established the town of Americana.

Nicknamed the “Confederados,” these immigrants set up a surreal little world of good old Southern values. They built Baptist churches, flew the Stars and Bars, and ate biscuits and black-eyed peas. And when they weren’t using forced labor to work their new cotton plantations, they were throwing antebellum balls and singing old-fashioned Southern ballads.

While the town has toned down its Dixieland vibe, the Confederados’ descendants still speak fluent English and throw an annual festival where people dress up in Southern costumes, have grand parties, and unfurl the Confederate flag—all in the middle of Brazil.

1Monkey Island

From Doctor Moreau to King Kong to Jurassic Park, islands have always had a special place in science fiction. These little land masses are perfect for creating weird worlds and strange situations that wouldn’t happen on the mainland. But while you probably won’t find a real-world island populated with polar bears, magical wells, and time travel, quite a few in the ocean have their own mysterious stories.

Take Monkey Island for example. Deep in the jungles of Liberia, in the middle of the Farmington River, is an island populated with over 60 chimpanzees. Surrounded by water, these apes spend their days hidden in the trees but rush down to the beach whenever white-clad workers show up with food and medicine.

The story of Monkey Island (chimps aren’t monkeys, but it’s a local nickname) starts back in 1974, when the New York Blood Center opened a research facility in Liberia. Named “Vilab,” the facility was dedicated to curing deadly diseases. That meant infecting over 100 apes with viruses like hepatitis because chimps are the only non-human species susceptible to the illness.

The facility closed down in 2005 thanks to changing attitudes toward animal testing, raising the question of where the infected chimps were going to go. That’s where Monkey Island came in. The apes were placed on an island where they would spend the rest of their lives in relative comfort.

Today, the chimps are cared for by local teams working with the New York Blood Center. Most of the animals are completely healthy and show no signs of plotting a revolution.

If you want to keep up with Nolan’s writing, you can friend/follow him on Facebook or email him here.

Some of the world’s greatest wonders are the historical sites that have existed for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Many of them were lost to human knowledge for centuries before they were uncovered. Thanks to urbanization, natural disasters, and pollution, however, it is likely that these historical landmarks will be lost once more before the end of this century.

10Glacier National Park

Around 10,000 years ago, the ice in the area of Montana’s Glacier National Park was about 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) deep. When the park was founded in 1910, there were around 150 glaciers. Only 25 of these giants remain, and it is suspected that all of them might be gone by 2030.

The heart of the National Park, Grinnell Glacier, has lost more than 90 percent of its ice over the past century. It’s no surprise that global warming is the cause, but the park seems to be getting hit even worse than other places: The temperature in the area has increased 1.8 times more than other areas around the globe.

It’s not just the glaciers that are in danger of disappearing. The icy streams that have always flowed from the great sheets of ice keep the ecosystem of the park going, with its wolves, herds of elk, and one of the largest populations of grizzly bears in lower America. If the glaciers go, not only will the last remnant of the Ice Age disappear, several species will find their home in shambles.

9The Valley Of Kings

The resting places of the mighty pharaohs of Egypt, such as Ramses II and the boy king Tutankhamun, have inspired wonder and awe through centuries. Unfortunately, they have also inspired many treasure hunters who were little more than thieves and plunderers.

But now, the Valley of Kings faces a different kind of threat. This one comes not from greedy Indiana Jones wannabes but several thousand well-meaning tourists. Fungus has begun to grow out of control around the tombs, and scientists believe that the parasite has flourished due to poor ventilation and the respiration of thousands of visitors. The head of Egypt’s antiques has reported that the tombs may vanish within 150 years.

The engravings and paintings inside the tombs are already beginning to disappear. In response, the number of tourists allowed inside the tombs has been restricted, and some exhibits have been closed completely. Hopefully, these restrictions, along with the use of new ventilation systems in the tombs, will be enough to save them.

8Seychelles

It’s probably a fair bet that most people haven’t heard of the Seychelles, a group of around 115 islands not far from the more well-known Madagascar. They were somehow completely uninhabited by humans until the British East India Company discovered them in the 1600s. After that, they became a haven for pirates. Today, they are known as one of the greatest places to see the biggest fish in the sea: whale sharks. The Seychelles hold some of the earliest scientific records about the magnificent creatures, which are strictly protected.

However, the islands could be underwater in as little as half a century, largely due to the destruction of the coral barriers around the beaches. The Seychelles have fallen victim to one of the most brutal incidences of coral bleaching worldwide. The rising temperatures destroy the coral and leave it a disturbing, almost skeleton-like white, destroying entire ecosystems and leaving everyone who lives on the islands vulnerable to devastating events like hurricanes.

7Olympia

When we think of ancient Greece, most of us think of the Greek gods, Sparta, or the Olympics. While everyone knows that the Olympics were created in Greece, not many people know about the exact city where they were founded.

Olympia has been occupied by several different cults over the years who worshiped several different gods, from Kronos, the King of Titans, to the goddess of lust and beauty, Aphrodite. Over time, one cult claimed the city completely for their god, the ruler of the Olympians, Zeus himself. Nearly everything in the city was designed to honor him, from the magnificent 13-meter (42 ft) statue covered in gold and ivory (which, sadly, no longer exists) to the Olympic games themselves. Today, the Olympic flame is still ignited in this city and then transported to wherever the games are being held.

Ironically, it is fire that threatens the origin site of the beloved games. In 2007, several fires that were started by arsonists spread rapidly across the country, killing more than 60 people. The flames were barely contained by a dedicated team of firefighters just a hillside away from wiping out the historic site of the original games. Thanks to global warming, fires have become much more commonplace and much more powerful, threatening to burn the site to a crisp and render all efforts to protect it in vain.

6The Chan Chan Archaeological Zone

Chan Chan, which enjoys the titles of the largest pre-Columbian city to be discovered and the largest ever adobe city, covers around 20 kilometers (12 mi) of Peruvian land. It was originally inhabited by the Chimu people, who divided the city into nine different citadels, each of which were autonomous.

Chan Chan has also been labeled by anthropologists as the “first true engineering society in the New World.” Their projects, such as an irrigation system that supplied the entire city and their attempt to create a massive canal that would have stretched to the Chicama River 80 kilometers (50 mi) north, were unheard of in “civilized” Europe. The city lasted for more than 600 years before the Incan Empire finally managed to overthrow it.

Today, this archaeological wonder is under attack not only from those who come to pillage and loot but also from storms caused by the deadly El Nino phenomena. To make matters worse, powerful earthquakes put the city in danger of being crushed completely.

5The Galapagos Islands

Everyone who’s taken a high school biology class knows about Charles Darwin and how he was inspired to devise his theory of evolution while studying the wildlife of these secluded islands. Nearly 9,000 species, many of which can be found nowhere else in the entire world, call these islands home. However, the wildlife that makes the Galapagos so unique is being seriously threatened.

As the number of immigrant workers and tourists has increased, the latter by more than 12 percent every year, so does the number of invasive species. Goats and pigs eat the food that the native species need to survive, and predators such as rats make off with the young and the weak. For thousands of years, there were no predators at all on the islands, and evolution works too slowly for many of these unique animals to hope to catch up in time.

4The Chersonesos Archaeological Site

Though it is located in modern-day Ukraine, southwest of the Crimean Peninsula, Chersoneos is actually an ancient Greek site, founded between 300 and 200 B.C. However, much like Ukraine currently, it was not a peaceful site. Though it was one of the few relatively democratic societies at the time, historical records have shown that this city-state was constantly at war against the Scythian people and the Roman Empire. It eventually lost its independence to the latter.

In the fifth century, most of the Greek buildings and temples were destroyed as Christianity became the dominant religion. However, even becoming part of the Byzantine Empire was not enough to save the society, as nomadic tribes raided and burned it around eight centuries later.

The Soviet Union discovered the site when they annexed Crimea in the 1800s. It was rigidly protected and reconstructed, becoming one of the most important sites for Russian historians and archaeologists to study. Today, it is under attack by both natural and man-made forces, as coastal erosion, pollution, and urban encroachment threaten its destruction.

3Intramuros

The name of this district of Manilla, which is the second largest city in the Philippines, means “within the walls.” It’s a very appropriate moniker, considering that it has been guarded by the same walls since they were built in the 16th century despite the horrific damage and destruction they have endured. It was the original capital of the city, when the Spanish Empire still owned the territory.

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the Philippines. Manilla was hit especially hard, and several historical buildings within Intramuros—such as the Santo Domingo Church and the original University of Santo Tomas—were ravaged. However, the real destruction occurred when America fought to take back the city from Japan. After this attack, only 5 percent of the original structures were left standing, and 40 percent of the walls had turned to rubble.

In 1951, Intramuros was declared a historic monument. Slow progress has been made toward its restoration, including the return of its five original gates to their former glory. However, these ancient walls cannot keep out the modern world. Several franchises of Starbucks and McDonald’s have been erected around the ancient city, and the moats surrounding it have been converted into golf courses. Historians tremble at what will come next.

2Hisham’s Palace

Hisham’s Palace was buried underneath the sand in A.D. 747 and remained there until Palestinian archeologist D.C. Baramki began excavating it in 1934. Sadly, historians fear that the site might not be around in as few as 100 years.

Intriguingly, no one is quite sure what Hisham’s Palace is supposed to be. When it vanished from sight, it also seemed to vanish from any historical text. The only hint archaeologists have found is a chunk of pottery bearing the name “Hisham.” Baramki’s colleague, Robert W. Hamilton, has argued that this is proof that the palace belonged to the heir of the caliph, Al-Walid II. All we really know for sure is that it was definitely built in the early eighth century and destroyed by a massive earthquake.

Tragically, we might never know the palace’s secrets. It’s threatened by the massive expansion from the neighboring, modern Jericho as well as extremely vulnerable to the natural elements after being buried under the sand for so long. The sand appears to be seeking to claim it yet again.

1Lamu, Kenya

This city has been a World Heritage Site since 2001, but it has been around since the 14th century. Lamu was one of the original Swahili settlements, founded on the east coast of Africa, and it’s still inhabited to this day. During its golden age, Lamu was one of the biggest cities around, a scholastic center of arts, politics, and literature. The city later became an important strategic location for both Germany and Britian, and it only gained its independence along with Kenya in the 1960s.

Although Lamu has been a bustling town filled with people for many centuries, people nowadays are doing their best to avoid or leave it. In 2011, travel to Lamu was banned due to several kidnappings carried out by the terrorist group Al Shaabab, who claims vengeance for stolen Muslim lands as its motive for the kidnappings as well as several brutal assaults on the city just this year that have left many dead. The terrorist attacks make it all but impossible to preserve historical sites such as Lamu Fort.

+The Taj Mahal

Created as a tomb by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, the Taj Mahal took more than 20,000 laborers, 1,000 elephants, and 20 years to complete. It is considered one of the most breathtaking marvels of the ancient world, but in under five years, it could be completely closed to the public.

A little over 10 years ago, one study determined that air and water pollution were starting to turn the beautiful white building a sickly yellow color, and the India Supreme Court ordered that a small fortune be spent restoring the site. The program to halt the damage attracted global attention, but as of 2014, the problem isn’t getting any better.

Though some workers at the monument have denied it, studies have shown that the levels of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide have increased dramatically. Vehicles are not permitted to come within 500 meters (1,640 ft) of the palace. As the city of Agra and the massive amount of traffic that comes with it continues to grow, the Taj Mahal may still be doomed.

Ashley Lewis is a hardworking college student, sweating blood in her quest to finish her first novel. She wrote all throughout her high school career on the school newspaper, making up lists about the wacky and weird.

Giving birth is a personal and intimate experience. Some choose to do so at home, while others opt for the amenities that the hospital can offer. In some cases, however, there simply is no choice in where the baby is coming once it decides to come.

For the following women, the miracle of life happened in some strange yet memorable places, leaving them with stories to tell for years to come. Here are ten decidedly unusual places where women have given birth.

10 Walmart

While this may sound like the plot of the 2000 Natalie Portman movie Where the Heart Is, it is far from fiction.

An unnamed woman in Utah had no plans to give birth the day she went into Walmart to buy a few necessities in October 2016. After managing to complete her shopping trip, the woman and her husband went through checkout and were about to pay when she started feeling pains. By then, it became obvious that she was in labor, but before any other measures were taken, the woman insisted on paying first. Despite the manager insisting it wasn’t necessary, the woman paid for her merchandise and ended up being too far along for emergency services to get there in time to help deliver the baby.

The mother gave birth in checkout aisle 11 to a healthy baby boy before being taken to the hospital. Afterward, the store employees and managers stayed in contact with the mother and detailed their plans to throw her a baby shower, providing her with gifts such as diapers and formula and even a cake to celebrate the birth of the baby.^[1]

This is not the first baby to be born in a Walmart. Similar incidents have occurred in Georgia, Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Virginia, New York, Indiana, and Quebec, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “one-stop shop.”

9 McDonald’s

Breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day, and at a Sarasota, Florida, McDonald’s in December 2016, it was an important time of the day for a completely different reason.

April Jones was visiting her local McDonald’s to have breakfast with her mother during the latter’s shift on a regular Saturday morning. What April didn’t expect was for her breakfast to be interrupted by a man calling for help. Sean Jordan and his expecting wife Cathy, along with their two-year old son, had also stopped in McDonald’ for a quick bite to eat. While waiting for her food, Cathy had experienced a sudden need to use the restroom, and while she was in there, she began to go into labor. She called for help and was heard by her husband, who alerted the restaurant. A person in the next stall offered Cathy her jacket once Cathy announced she was in labor. Thankfully, April, a nurse who works with the elderly, was able to go to the mother’s aid.

By the time April joined the mother in the bathroom stall, Cathy had already started crowning. At this time, it also became obvious that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. April was able to turn the baby boy and loosen the cord, but he was blue and not breathing on his own. Paramedics arrived on the scene, helping April cut the cord, and the baby was given oxygen.

The paramedics took both mother and son to the ambulance for treatment, and April was allowed to see them before they were taken to the hospital. At this point, the baby boy was breathing on his own and had opened his eyes.^[2] The experience had April considering going back to school to become a registered nurse and work in labor and delivery, deciding that she was, in fact, “lovin’ it.”

8 Chick-Fil-A

When a baby decides it’s on its way, the time between labor and delivery varies greatly. For one mother, making a pit stop on the way to the hospital didn’t seem to be a problem. Falon Griffin went into labor in July 2018 and was en route to the hospital when she and her husband Robert had to drop their two daughters off with a friend. The meeting point chosen? A San Antonio Chick-fil-A.

While Robert was bringing the girls over to meet their friend, Falon had a serious urge to use the restroom. Despite already being in labor, she managed to get out of the car and ask the manager if she could be allowed in. The manager agreed, but it turned out that Falon’s need to use the restroom was a sign of the labor progressing, and the baby was no longer waiting to get to the hospital to arrive.^[3]

Thankfully, the staff helped Falon and Robert, bringing them towels and standing by as Robert used his shirt to help deliver his newborn daughter right in the bathroom stall. The umbilical cord had been wrapped around the baby’s neck, not once but twice, yet Robert was able to loosen it without alerting his wife to the setback. The baby, named Gracelyn, was born in the bathroom stall, and the manager and Chick-fil-A staff warmed up towels to keep her warm until the paramedics arrived minutes later.

After the birth, the store owner pledged that Gracelyn would be able to eat free food there for life and would be guaranteed a job if she wanted it. The manager and staff were so excited that they consulted with the owner so that when Gracelyn turns one, her first birthday can be celebrated in the exact same place she was born.

7 Lifeboat

The use of lifeboats is normally reserved for dire circumstances, when it’s necessary to save the lives of others—or in this case, to help bring a new life into the world. On the Scottish island of Mull, the ferry runs only from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, leaving the emergency lifeboat as the only alternative to get back to the mainland. So at around 5:00 AM on August 3, 2009, Junelle Wilson and her husband boarded the Oban lifeboat, hoping they could get to the mainland in time for the paramedics waiting for them at the dock to take them to the hospital.

Junelle had realized she was going into labor, and due to the lack of alternatives, she and her husband made the call for the emergency lifeboat to take them. What Junelle didn’t expect was for her contractions to continue to increase and for her baby to decide that right then and there was the best time to come into the world, on a lifeboat in the bay just five minutes from Oban Harbor.^[4] Thankfully, the Oban lifeboat crew were prepared, and there was a midwife on board ready to help Junelle deliver her baby. With their help, Junelle gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and about 12 hours after she boarded the lifeboat, both Junelle and her son, Van Harris, were boarding the ferry to go back home.

For the crew of the Oban lifeboat, delivering babies is nothing new. Van Harris is one of four babies to have been born on the lifeboat as of 2016 and was the only boy so far.

6 Street Corner

Getting a cab in New York City can be difficult and time-consuming, but for one mother, getting a taxi was the least of her worries. Polly McCourt started to feel ill one afternoon in February 2014. After sending her oldest kid to a playground with a friend, calling for their babysitter to watch her youngest, and heading home, Polly’s symptoms started to worsen. She called her doctor, and Polly was instructed to go to the hospital—immediately.^[5]

By the time she made it into the lobby of her apartment building after calling her husband, her water had broke. Her doorman had already hailed a cab for her, which arrived at the same moment Polly realized she wouldn’t be making it into the cab, let alone to the hospital. The baby was coming now, right there on the sidewalk outside her building. With the help of her doorman and a crowd that had gathered, Polly delivered her baby girl outside her home.

A woman named Isabel Williams offered Polly and her newborn daughter her coat. Polly and her husband Cian, who arrived three minutes after their daughter was born, named the baby Ila Isabel, her middle name chosen for the kindness bestowed upon them by a stranger.

5 Airplane

In what was supposed to be a routine flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, those on board received a different sort of in-flight entertainment. Despite sounding like the introduction for a TV show, a baby was born during a JetBlue flight in February 2019. The mother had boarded the plane and seemed fine, though it became obvious during the flight that the situation was about to take a turn.

Somewhere between Puerto Rico and Florida, the mother began to go into labor, and thanks to the staff on board, she was able to deliver a baby boy with no complications. The mother and baby were reported to be fine and were met on the ground by paramedics who checked them both over.

Despite the chaos of having a baby being delivered on the plane, the flight ended up arriving 11 minutes ahead of schedule.^[6] The baby is officially JetBlue’s youngest customer to ever fly with them. Coincidentally, the plane which hosted the birth is named “Born to Be Blue.”

Babies being born on planes isn’t exactly unheard-of. In 2017, a woman gave birth prematurely to a baby during her Jet Airways flight from Saudi Arabia to India, and the baby was given free plane tickets for life by the airline.

4 Six Flags

Theme parks are full of happiness, time spent with the family, adventure, and sometimes even unexpected surprises. In July 2018, a Georgia mom named Crusita was enjoying the day at the park with her daughter in Hurricane Harbor at Six Flags when she realized that something was off. She took her daughter with her to the first aid post and informed them that she was pretty certain she was going into labor.

The Six Flags team acted quickly, calling emergency responders in to help Crusita, and although they arrived quickly, Crusita was already too far along to make it to the hospital. Instead, Crusita had her baby in the theme park with no complications. The baby boy, named Matthew, was the second baby to be born at the park.^[7]

To celebrate the birth of Matthew, Six Flags offered both him and his mother Diamond Elite Memberships, allowing them to enter any Six Flags park for free for the rest of their lives.

3 New York Taxi

As the saying goes, when you know, you know. Chantal McKenna had been experiencing contractions since midnight one morning in July 2017. At 7:30 AM, she knew it was time to go to the hospital. Unfortunately, going anywhere in New York takes a bit of time, even if it’s just grabbing the elevator in your own apartment building.

Chantal and her husband, Mark, along with their doula, gathered up their things and headed to the elevator, which they found filled. Even though Mark announced that Chantal was in labor and had to go to the hospital, their neighbors only moved out of the way and then rode the elevator the whole 24 floors down while Chantal battled her contractions.^[8]

By the time they got to the bottom, their Uber had already left. Thankfully, their doorman was able to catch them a cab even though it was the morning rush hour. As the taxi crept through the slow-moving traffic, Chantal’s contractions kept speeding up, and by the time they got to Central Park, Chantal was well-aware that she was going to have her baby right there, in the back of the cab. The baby was born only a few minutes later, surprising both the doula and Chantal, who went to check on how far along Chantal was and found her baby’s head sticking out.

The cab driver had pulled over by that time, and emergency personnel were called, all while a crowd gathered, cheering and congratulating the couple. Paramedics checked out the newly named Josef, who was completely healthy, and the family was transported to the hospital—but not before paying their fare and generously tipping their cab driver.

2 A Strip Club Parking Lot

Nate Jones and his wife, Amenze, had planned out the delivery of their baby, but their plans were derailed on the way to the hospital in March 2011 when Nate was pulled over for speeding. Even though they weren’t given a ticket, their timetable was now cut short, and Amenze warned her husband that there was no way she was going to make it to the hospital.

Nate chose to pull into the nearest parking lot so that he could call 911. The parking lot in question was that of Flashdancers, a popular Arlington, Texas, strip club. The strip club was not unfamiliar to Nate, a reporter for the local newspaper who had covered the club on a few occasions. Their plans were once again changed when it was discovered that no one from the emergency medical personnel called in had ever delivered a baby before. Thankfully, Amanze knew what to expect, as did Nate, with this being their third child. With the help of paramedics, they were able to deliver their baby boy safely into the world.

Bouncers kept the growing crowd at bay; no longer were patrons interested in the show inside but were more focused on what was going outside. The baby, named William, was taken to the hospital and given a clean bill of health.^[9]

1 Inside A Hospital Elevator

Getting to the hospital in time can be one of the hardest struggles for mothers when their child decides to change its arrival plans. One mother, Katie Thacker, had the opposite problem in January 2012. After getting safely to the St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband, mom, sister, and midwife in tow, Katie was transported along with three nurses to the 14th floor in order for her to give birth.^[10] On the way there, however, the elevator made an unplanned stop on floor 12. Deciding to get off to give Katie more space, as her contractions were increasing, her husband (Luke), mom, and sister got off and chose to take the stairs to the 14th floor. However, when they arrived, there was no elevator.

After the doors shut back on the 12th floor, the elevator seemed to have malfunctioned, leaving Katie and the nurses stuck between floors. Despite calling in the fire department for aid and reaching out to the elevator company in an attempt to get the elevator up and running again, the baby came before they could be freed. Katie gave birth in the elevator with the help of the nurses and her midwife while information was given to her husband through the nurses’ walkie-talkies. By the time they were able to get the elevator doors slightly ajar, almost two hours later, Luke was able to climb down and cut the umbilical cord.

The baby boy was handed up by his father through the doors and over to nurses. The infant was deemed to be healthy and in perfect shape. Katie and Luke decided to nickname their son Otis, after the company whose elevator he was delivered in.

For many of us, the question of what happens to us after we die is a complex spiritual matter regarding the eternal state of our souls. But the more immediate, tangible question should be: Where do our bodies go once we no longer have need of them?

The answer should be obvious—graveyards. Except for most of us city dwellers, that option is quickly running out. Limited underground grave space is swiftly becoming an international issue, one for which many cities have had to find creative and preemptive solutions.

10 New York City, New York

With an overwhelming population of over eight million people spread across five boroughs, New York is easily the largest city in the United States. With such a dense population, one can imagine how lively the city must be. It seems that the only place left for quiet reflection is its cemeteries.

But soon enough, these cemeteries will no longer serve as places where reverence of the past meets nostalgia for those who just walked among us. Instead, they will serve as relics of an increasingly distant past as the gravestone dates fail to keep up with the present.

For Manhattanites seeking a final resting place in their home borough, they only have one option left: Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum. Established in 1697, the original churchyard is the final home to Alexander Hamilton and his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, son Philip Hamilton, and sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler Church. The Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum is the only active gravesite left in Manhattan, and it can only accommodate aboveground burials.^[1]

If you live in any other borough or are unable to secure a spot at Trinity, then your options are limited to New Jersey, the Green-Wood Cemetery, or the Cypress Hills Cemetery. The last two are both in historic Brooklyn.

At Cypress Hills, cemetery management is looking between graves to find new in-ground burial options. They have begun to dig new graves perpendicular to the road and old graves in order to use up every last inch of burial space available. At Canarsie Cemetery, also located in Brooklyn, management plans to build a whole new “town” of mausoleums to accommodate the steady demand for burial sites.

9 Hong Kong, China

Hong Kong has always been a bustling city with trade and popular tourist attractions. So naturally, the population has climbed to a steady 7.4 million residents. While this adds to the excitement of the city, it does not leave much room for residents who wish to reside in Hong Kong after death.

Hong Kong has been struggling to find adequate burial space since the 1980s—after using some available land on the city’s hillsides to create towering step cemeteries such as the Pok Fu Lam cemetery. These cemeteries, which are already nearly full, are a common host for the Qingming (“tomb sweeping”) festival in early April.

Descendants congregate at their ancestors’ tombs and pay their respects by cleaning and maintaining their families’ tombs. In fact, family members can pay upward of $30,000 for a private grave at Hong Kong’s Tseung Kwan O cemetery, for example, because space is so limited and descendants are so willing to accommodate the final wishes of their loved ones.^[2]

But for those who hope to find space in a public burial vault, the wait can be up to five years for cremated remains that sit in bags in funeral homes. By then, there may be no space left.

For those future generations wondering what options will be available to them? Well, Hong Kong’s government has proposed a rather creative solution: a floating cemetery with room for nearly 370,000 urns. This “Floating Eternity” would also provide green space for families to picnic during their visits and plenty of bamboo gardens in which to celebrate the city’s many festivals.

8 London, England

In London, posthumous realty is quickly becoming a hot commodity. Two of London’s boroughs—Tower Hamlets and Hackney—simply stopped offering burial services because they cannot accommodate any more graves. In fact, Tower Hamlets has not had any new burials since 1966.

Many cemeteries, like Tower Hamlets, have considered recycling graves. In fact, the City of London Cemetery in east London has already begun this process. After posting notices on the appropriate graves at least six months beforehand, the city exhumes coffins from graves that are 75 years or older and digs deeper graves. Then they place the old coffins at the bottom and bury new individuals on top.

In 2017, Parliament passed a law that allows cemeteries to legally reclaim and reuse one of these graves. While this solution has created considerable backlash, the alternative—clearing out woodland areas and other limited green space—is just as difficult to support. For many Londoners, this decision comes down to the preservation of family history or the preservation of vital green space.^[3]

7 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Back on American shores, the historic city of Philadelphia has run into an unusual architectural problem: Many construction sites are forced to delay progress due to the discovery of miscellaneous human remains. Shockingly, this is not a new problem for Philly construction. Newspapers reported this occurrence as early as 1851.

The city, which is home to many defunct and forgotten gravesites, has had to combat this recurring issue by creating a map of every cemetery, burial ground, and graveyard that the city has known. With the help of the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, the city has been able to create a comprehensive map of current and past burial sites.

As for current and future burials, Philadelphia residents have been forced to look to the suburbs for grave space. Laurel Hill, the city’s largest and most historic cemetery, has fought to preserve their vast green space.^[4]

Built in the Victorian era, Laurel Hill has steadily expanded to become a 78-acre site that is popular among both the living and the dead. However, the cemetery has been forced to slow down the rate at which they host burials due to being at 99 percent capacity.

Now Laurel Hill Cemetery only hosts about 25 in-ground burials per year and has opened new accommodations such as private and community mausoleums, a columbarium (a space specifically built for housing urns), and a ceremonial scattering garden.

6 Venice, Italy

Perhaps surprisingly, this world-famous lagoon city—known for scenic gondola rides and epic bridges—is a popular final resting place for both residents and tourists. One might think, how would a city known for its waterways host a cemetery?

Well, in 1837, Isola di San Michele, an island located just off Venice’s northeast shore, was decreed the only Venetian space where burials were allowed. However, San Michele Island Cemetery is less than 2.6 square kilometers (1 mi²) in size and can only accommodate a very limited number of burials.

As such, the cemetery is traditionally only used as a temporary resting place. After 12 years, the bodies are exhumed and cremated or placed in an ossuary within the Venice city limits.

In recent years, the Venice city council passed a law allowing individuals to charter a boat 700 meters (2,300 ft) out from shore to scatter the ashes of their loved ones. For individuals wishing to scatter ashes on the land, the city has also allotted a small garden on San Michele where this is sanctioned.^[5]

5 Singapore

In Singapore, land for burial sites is becoming harder to obtain for vastly different reasons. In search of available land for new highways and shopping centers, Singapore has begun exhuming graves to clear space for such infrastructure developments.

In the city-state’s Bukit Brown Cemetery, nearly half of the existing 100,000 graves have been exhumed for a new eight-lane highway passing through the center of the cemetery. But the construction does not stop there. Singapore’s Ministry of National Development plans to devote the remaining land of Bukit Brown Cemetery to housing and apartment complexes for the city-state’s increasing population.

A similar process, which met with public discontent, began in the early 2000s in Singapore’s historic Bidadari Cemetery. Bodies were exhumed, and remains were either relocated or cremated. For Muslim graves, a new underground crypt was built that would accommodate religious practices while also using as much available space as possible.^[6]

Both the Bukit Brown and the Bidadari cemeteries closed for in-ground burials in the mid- to late 1900s but remained available for cremations and columbarium burials. Even in one of Singapore’s active cemeteries, Choa Chu Kang, space is being cleared for the creation of public buildings and roadways. As a result, Singaporeans are looking to cremation and columbarium burials in hopes of preserving the permanence of their final resting places.

4 Tel Aviv, Israel

According to Jewish religious practices and Halachah, any out-of-ground burial, including cremation, is banned due to the belief that God created our bodies as sacred. Therefore, we must return our bodies to the Earth and the Creator.

As a result, burial space in Israel—already near capacity—is doubly hard to come by because any possible solutions are limited. To combat this, Israeli officials have suggested that the nation look at “high-density burials.” This has manifested in the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv with the creation of a four-story burial complex.

But why doesn’t this complex violate the in-ground burial stipulation?

Simple. The architects designed the building to look like rolling hills with flowers and shrubbery growing along its outer walls. To further abide by Halachah, each story has a dirt floor with a column of dirt connecting it to the subsequent floor below until that column reaches to the very ground upon which the structure is built.

Also observing the Jewish law that the dead be buried as individuals, each burial chamber is separated by cement walls. While risky, this practice was received well by the public.^[7]

3 Netherlands

With the Netherlands known for its water usage innovations and eco-friendly waste management practices, it is no surprise to find that the country has extended its recycling policies to its graveyards. Due to poor soil conditions and high underground water tables, the Netherlands already had limited options when it came to cemetery building.

As a result, they have only allowed citizens to rent out gravesites for 20 years. At that point, relatives can decide to extend the lease or to give up the space. If no relatives reach out within six months of a notice posted to the gravestone, then cemetery management relocates the deceased to a communal plot.

The only exceptions to this law are Jewish cemeteries where Jewish law does not allow graves to be exhumed or relocated. However, tracking down next of kin can be tricky for “general graves” that have up to three unrelated individuals buried in the same plot. Due to this and a general disdain for disturbing the dead, exhuming the graves with expired leases is more difficult to enforce in practice.^[8]

2 Australia

In the Land Down Under, it is increasingly difficult to find space 1.8 meters (6 ft) under. A controversial 2018 law stated that relatives of the deceased could rent burial plots for 25–99 year periods. Once the leases are up, if the relatives cannot be reached or do not contact the cemetery within two years of lease expiration, then the cemetery is legally allowed to reclaim the graves by exhuming the bodies and moving the bones to a communal ossuary.^[9]

Another less controversial but less common option is that of a natural “green” burial in Bunurong Memorial Park, a cemetery near Dandenong. Within the park lies Murrun Naroon, or “Life Spirit”—a heavily wooded area set aside for natural burials without coffins or headstones.

A “green” burial consists of the body of the deceased being wrapped in a decomposable shroud with a plastic GPS tracker attached. Over time, the body and shroud will naturally decay in the earth to provide nutrients and new life for the native Australian flora.

However, the GPS tracker will remain behind—buried in the ground—so that descendants can visit their ancestor’s final resting place and soak up the new life left in his stead.

1 Tokyo, Japan

The cemeteries of Tokyo have been combating limited grave space for two generations. In the 1970s, Tokyo built its only locker cinerarium to preserve in-ground burial space. This type of burial is not common due to Japan’s long tradition of honoring ancestors in family burial spaces surrounding beautiful Buddhist temples.

However, by the mid-1960s, available burial space within Tokyo’s Buddhist temples was nonexistent. As a result, Tokyo’s inhabitants resorted to faraway gravesites, such as Kamakura and Mount Fuji, which still offered serene spaces perfect for reflection. However, this solution was a temporary one that ended up being far too expensive for the average Tokyo family.

As a result, the Ruriden columbarium was built to meld centuries-old tradition with modern Japanese culture. The Ruriden, which allows relatives of the deceased to access their loved one’s urns via an electric card, preserved the burial urns upon a small alter next to a Buddha statue.^[10]

Situated behind glass, these urns light up when the electric card is swiped so that family members can easily locate their loved one’s remains. After 33 years, the urns are relocated to a crypt beneath the structure’s floor.

The British Isles are home to some of the most lavish and historic landmarks, many of which are famous all over the world. Think Big Ben or the Houses of Parliament. But perhaps not as famous are the unbelievably named towns and villages found strewn throughout the land.

When we say “unbelievably named,” we actually mean humorous, rude, or downright bizarre names for places which are actually inhabited or visited by human beings. However, some of these places actually have amazing and rich histories, which are worth reading in their own right. Read on to discover ten of the rudest-sounding places in the British Isles . . . with unbelievable stories.

10 Brown Willy

Brown Willy is a hill that can be found in the county of Cornwall, the southernmost county of England. The hill supposedly gets its name from the Cornish Bronn Ewhella, which translates as “highest hill.” This is likely due to the fact that Brown Willy stands 420 meters (1,378 ft) above sea level and is the highest point in Cornwall. The hill is also known for the “Brown Willy effect,” a local phenomenon in which heavy rain that has developed on Brown Willy travels downwind causing showers in lower areas. The effects of this phenomenon can be serious flash flooding and dangerous amounts of rainfall, causing widespread damage.

In 2012, local visitors to the hill campaigned to have the name changed due to the “giggle factor”—but the name remains unchanged today.^[1] Interestingly, Brown Willy is widely regarded as sacred by UFO followers, who visit the hill annually. These followers believe Brown Willy was supercharged with what they call “holy energy.” We can only hope that this is a myth, and Brown Willy does not explode.

9 Cockermouth

Cockermouth is without a doubt the most stunning location of this list. Situated on the edge of the beautiful Lake District in the county of Cumbria, Cockermouth is known as only one of 51 “Gem” towns in the UK.^[2] The name is derived from the town’s location, as it is quite literally at the mouth of the River Cocker. Due to its proximity to the River Cocker, it has also, unfortunately, been home to terrible flooding. In 2009, it was so heavily flooded that the British Army had to take control of the town in an aid effort, airlifting people out from their homes.

Cockermouth traces its history back to the Romans, who built a fort, which was later destroyed, in the vicinity of the current town center. Cockermouth Castle was rebuilt near it. The town is also notable for being the birthplace of the famous Lake Poet William Wordsworth, and the town contains tributes to him. The most famous of these is Wordsworth House, his birthplace, which has been restored and is now a museum.

8 Bell End

Found in the county of Worcestershire, Bell End is a village with proximity to the notable towns of Kidderminster and Stourbridge. The village is home to a stunning Gothic revival mansion known as Bell Hall. The mansion is built on property dating back to Norman times and has a Norman chapel to go with it. According to some reports, Guy Fawkes hid on the property when he was on the run, after the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.^[3] Another notable resident, Lady Godiva, was said to have resided on the original grounds. Lady Godiva is most known for being said to have ridden naked through the streets of Coventry to protest against taxation laws. If the reports are true, then the estate has a fantastic link to some of the most infamous figures in Britain’s history.

So, why is Bell End on this list? For those not aware, Bell End shares its name with a British slang phrase for the glans penis and is frequently listed as one of the most unusual or shocking place names. Unfortunately for residents who have campaigned to have the name changed, it still remains Bell End today.

7 Sandy Balls

Set deep within the New Forest near Fordingbridge, Sandy Balls is a large area of parkland and forests with a long history of being a popular holiday spot. Sandy Balls is in the county of Hampshire, near the south coast of England. The name of the area goes back to medieval times in England, during which the circular, sandy domes gave the place the name “Sandyballas.” After the end of World War I, the area was developed as a school camp for a youth movement, but it has now been established as a popular holiday center.^[4]

The New Forest has been touted as possibly the most haunted part of Britain due to a number of sightings, the most famous being Rufus the Red, who was suspiciously killed by an arrow while hunting in the forest. Local stories say that Rufus’s ghost can still be seen today in the forest, and the blood of the man who was responsible for firing the arrow—Sir Walter Tirel—turns the Ocknell Pond red every year. Other apparition sightings include the Stratford Lyon, a large, antlered, red lion that carries a man on its back. The Lyon was said to have come from the ground after the man pulled at a set of antlers. Another is the Witchy White—a witch who casts love spells and who is said to wander the forest to this day.

6 Shitlington Crags

Shitlington Crags is an area in Northumberland which is a popular visitor spot. A crag, in England, is typically a group of cliffs which are known for climbing. Shitlington Crags is known as part of a larger walking area in the Hexham area of Northumberland. The crags get their name from an abandoned medieval village known as Shitlington. It was first recorded in 1279 but seems to have been gone by the 17th century.^[5]

Shitlington Crags is near the village of Wark, Northumberland, which is noted for having the Goatstones. The Goatstones are thought to be religious stones left by the Anglo-Saxons, and they get their name from Anglo-Saxon gyet stanes, which means “wayside stones.” Wark is also the home of a listed Milky Way Class Dark Sky Discovery Site, meaning the area is so secluded that the stars and Moon are illuminated brilliantly in the night sky.

5 Great Cockup

The amusing-sounding Great Cockup is a fell which is located in the stunning Lake District, in the county of Cumbria. A fell is a high, barren landform, like a cluster of mountains or large hills that can often be traversed by walkers. Great Cockup is partnered by its equally amusing-sounding neighbor Little Cockup.^[6] For those unaware, “cockup” is a slang term for badly messing up, particularly in an embarrassing way.

Great Cockup is part of a number of mountains in the area known as the Northern Fells. The Northern Fells include Souther Fell, which is most famous for a ghostly sighting that occurred in 1745. According to witnesses, on the evening of Midsummer’s Day in 1745, a line of troops marching were noticed walking along the ridge of the fell. The line included horses and carriages, and witnesses were said to be “sober and respected,” therefore verifying as credible. The following day, Souther Fell was scaled, and not a single footprint or carriage mark could be found along the edge where the army had traveled.

4 Tongue Of Gangsta

Yes, you read that right. Residing in the Orkney Islands, Tongue of Gangsta is a place that can be found on the Orkney mainland. Tongue of Gangsta is directly south of the capital of Orkney, Kirkwall.^[7] Kirkwall gets its name from the Norse name Kirkjuvagr (Church Bay), so we can only assume that Tongue of Gangsta has some Norse origins, too.

There is extremely limited information about the toponymy of Tongue of Gangsta. Kirkwall was historically an outpost or meeting place for Scandinavian travelers. It has been described as being the center of their world and as more Scandinavian than Scottish. The area was acquired by King James III in 1468 and has been under Scottish rule ever since. During World War II, in the nearby Scapa Flow, the Royal Navy used the port at Scapa as a main base. In 1939, the HMS Royal Oak was sunk by a German U-Boat and is now designated as a protected war grave.

3 Titty-Ho

Within the small market town of Raunds, Northamptonshire, is an area known as Titty-Ho. Titty-Ho is cited as being one of the most amusing names in Britain, and unfortunately for residents, the name has been highlighted on TV.^[8] Residents have noted that other people cannot contain their laughter when they disclose where they live.

Despite the immature-sounding name of one part of it, the town of Raunds has an interesting history. During the 1980s, excavations in the nearby Nene Valley revealed some remains of a Roman villa. This was in addition to finding medieval buildings such as a church and manor house the previous decade. Raunds has also been the site of prehistoric findings unearthed by English Heritage. Perhaps one day, a discovery may help archaeologists to determine exactly where the name Titty Ho comes from, but this may just be wishful thinking.

2 Wetwang

Wetwang is a village located in the historic county of Yorkshire. The village name is proposed as being a Viking name meaning “meeting place”—as the village is located on a crossroads of two main roads.^[9] The name can obviously be misconstrued as meaning something else entirely.

Wetwang is very old and is even recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086! The village is known to have existed long before 1086, however, and in 2001, a very exciting discovery was made under Wetwang. A chariot, belonging to British armies who fought against Julius Caesar, was uncovered alongside the remains of a female warrior. A street in Wetwang was renamed “Chariot Way” after this event.

Wetwang is also notable for its black swans and has a local public house named the Black Swan in honor of the local birds. The village often appears in lists of unusual or rude place names. During a Woman’s Institute centennial fair in 2015, the name of the village had to be censored on merchandise, as it was deemed as too rude!

1 Twatt

In what is probably the bluntest and most uncouth village name on this list, the village of Twatt can be found on the Orkney Islands. In a twist, there are actually two villages in the UK which share the name of Twatt. Interestingly, both villages are found right at the top of Scotland, with the second Twatt being located in the Shetland Islands.

The village in Orkney is situated on the Mainland island.^[10] The Orkney Twatt was the home of a Royal Navy airfield during World War II. The airfield was decommissioned in 1949, but an abandoned control tower still remains today and can be visited.

The village of Twatt in the Shetlands is a little less known but is definitely inhabited by people and known throughout the islands. The name of both Twatts derives from the Norse word thveit—meaning “small parcel of land.” As you would expect, both places frequently top the lists of the most rude-sounding village names in the UK.

Matt Garrow—I have an English degree (which I use) and a Law degree (which I don’t). I currently work a 9–5 and can found sleeping standing up because I have a 2 year old who doesn’t sleep. Peace !