In a message announcing his retirement to the readers of art magazine FMR, the Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci wrote: “To whoever asks me why, I shall answer in the same way as Voltaire: ‘Laissez-moi cultiver mon jardin.’ ”

The full import of those words has only now become apparent six years later with the news that the man who published some of the world’s most fantastical works ‑ and luxurious volumes ‑ has created its biggest maze. His labyrinth of bamboo hedges at Fontanellato near Parma reportedly covers some seven hectares (17.5 acres), which would make it more than five times larger than the Pineapple Garden Maze on Hawaii, the largest permanent hedge maze in the Guinness Book of Records. [THE GUARDIAN]

Ken Russell’s biopic (one of many he directed in the 70s), set in Bohemian Paris of 1910-15, was about eccentric Vorticist French sculptor Henri Gaudier (Scott Antony) and his relationship with older author Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin); Helen Mirren was featured as gloriously-nude model/suffragette Gosh Boyle posing and descending or ascending various staircases

Breezy is a teen-aged hippy with a big heart. After taking a a ride with a man who only wants her for sex, Breezy manages to escape. She runs to hide on a secluded property where stands the home of a middle-aged divorced man, Frank Harmon. Frank reluctantly takes Breezy in only to fall unexpectedly in love with her. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

Anita is a girl of only 16 years, and while she has developed early physically, to a mature woman, she is psychologically completly ruthless.

It is entirely possible to make excitation a way of life! This classic Swedish erotic gem stars Essy Persson (Therese and Isabelle) as Siv, a young, sexy nurse who tries to bed every man who crosses her path. Siv uses her raw sexuality to entice, seduce and eventually desert every man who loves or desires her.

Dreamboat Annie is the debut album by the band Heart, released in 1976.

Faye Dunaway

Christy Turlington

List of palaces

On a private isle in Italy’s Lago Maggiore that has been in the family for half a millennium, Principe and Principessa Borromeo are living the ultimate dolce vita.

Gellért Thermal Baths and Swimming Pool are a bath complex in Budapest, Hungary, built between 1912 and 1918 in the (Secession) Art Nouveau style. They were damaged during World War II, but then rebuilt. References to healing waters in this location are found from as early as the 13th century. A hospital was located on this site during the Middle Ages. During the reign of the Ottoman Empire, baths were also built on this particular site.

Nemo 33 is the deepest swimming pool in the world. Its maximum depth is 35 meters. It contains 2,500,000 liters of non-chlorinated, highly filtered spring water maintained at 30 °C (86 °F) and holds several simulated underwater caves at the 10 m depth level. There are numerous underwater windows that allow outside visitors to look into the pools at various depths. The complex was designed by Belgian diving expert John Beernaerts as a multi-purpose diving instruction, recreational, and film production facility, 2004.

San Juan Parangaricutiro was destroyed during the formation of the Parícutin volcano in 1943. Along with the village of Parícutin, San Juan Parangaricutiro was buried beneath ash and lava. The tops of cathedrals in old San Juan Parangaricutiro still protrude from the volcanic deposits.

The lighthouse tower is 23 metres high, and, when the lighthouse was built, it was 200 metres inland; and there were no large dunes around it.  With time the sea moved in closer, and, simultaneously, the wind blew large amounts of sand up from the cliff.  The sand piled up in front of and around the lighthouse.  It filled the well and ruined the kitchen gardens. To suppress the sand pine grates were set in and  lyme grass and helmet was planted in the dune.  The only result was that the dune just grew larger.  The more that was planted, the more the dune grew.  At last the sand was so high that at times it was impossible to see the light from the sea.  On August 1. 1968 the struggle was given up and the lighthouse was lit for the last time.

Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq mi). It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, and is elevated 3,656 meters (11,995 ft) above the mean sea level. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average altitude variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of salt and covers a pool of brine, which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world’s lithium reserves, which has yet to be extracted.

A tessellated pavement is a rare erosional feature formed in flat sedimentary rock formations lying on some ocean shores. The pavement bears this name because the rock has fractured into polygonal blocks that resemble tiles, or tessellations. The cracks (or joints) were formed when the rock fractured through the action of stress on the Earth’s crust and subsequently were modified by sand and wave action.

The Granite Mountain Records Vault is a large archive and vault owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excavated 600 feet into the north side of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The Granite Mountain facilities feature a dry, environment-controlled facility used for long-term record storage, as well as administrative offices, shipping and receiving docks, a processing facility and restoration laboratory for microfilm. Records stored include genealogical information contained in over 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and 1 million microfiche. This equals about 3 billion pages of family history records. The vault’s library of microfilm increases by up to 40,000 rolls per year. Since 1999, the church has been digitizing the genealogical microfilms stored in the vault. The church makes the records publicly available through its Family History Centers, as well as online at its FamilySearch website.

Salt water bubbles from the Qoripujio spring and is channelled to shallow men-made pools. Exposed to the sun, the water evaporates and the salt remains on the surface and is then collected and to be sold in the market. There are over 3,000 pools crammed into this hanging valley.

An explosion of natural color known as “the river that ran away from paradise”

The continuous Fly Geyser of Fly Ranch is on private land and began during a 1916 water well drilling that accidentally penetrated a geothermal source.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of valleys in Antarctica. The Dry Valleys are so named because of their extremely low humidity and their lack of snow or ice cover.

More photos

Dry Tortugas National Park preserves Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas section of the Florida Keys. It is famous for abundant sea life, colorful coral reefs and legends of shipwrecks and sunken treasures. The park’s centerpiece is Fort Jefferson, a massive but unfinished coastal fortress. It is the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere,^[1][2] and is composed of over 16 million bricks.

Fakaofo

Johnston Atoll was used by the U.S. Air Force to conduct test launchings of nuclear missiles and contains a landfill of plutonium-contaminated waste. More than four million pounds of chemical weapons have been destroyed on Johnston since 1990, and the U.S. military has been fined several times since then for improperly handing VX and sarin gas and releasing the deadly substances on the atoll. The military is gradually departing and the atoll will be turned into a wildlife refuge. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the atoll’s inheritor, is concerned about the possibility of eventual radioactive leakage.

Oarfish are found in all the world’s oceans at depths of between 300 and 1000 meters. Its total length can reach 17 m, and it can weigh up to 300 kg.

Neft Dashlari is referred to as “The Island of Seven Ships” because during construction of the bridge-head, disused ships were sunk to provide a solid base for causeways.One of the striking examples for offshore oil deposit development is “Oily Rocks” — “Neft Dashlari”. It is located to the south-east of Absheron Archipelago. In “Oily Rocks” sea depth ranges from 10 to 25 m, though part of the oil pool reaches 60 metres depth. Oil prospecting with geological survey, structure drilling, seismic prospecting and preliminary drilling started in 1945.

Read more. And about oil in Azerbaijan.

Coolest fucking dog ever.

Shergar was an acclaimed racehorse, and winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, the longest winning margin in the race’s 226-year history. On 8 February 1983, he was stolen from the Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland by masked gunmen with the body never being discovered. The incident has been the inspiration for several books, documentaries, and a film.

Rhodesia was an unrecognised state located in Southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965.

Spinalonga is located at the eastern section of Crete. The island was used as a leper colony, from 1903 to 1957. It is notable for being one of the last active leper colonies in Europe.

Florence Foster Jenkins was an American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability. Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins was firmly convinced of her greatness. She compared herself favorably to the renowned sopranos Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini, and dismissed the laughter which often came from the audience during her performances as coming from her rivals consumed by “professional jealousy.” She was aware of her critics, however, saying “People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.”

The Mauser C96 is a semi-automatic pistol that was originally produced by German arms manufacturer Mauser from 1896 to 1937. Unlicensed copies of the gun were also manufactured in Spain and China in the first half of the 20th century.

What a beauty

More

Diver insignia

The Makarov pistol was the Soviet Union’s standard military side arm from 1951-1991.

Filmmaker.

Château Margaux is a wine estate of Bordeaux wine, and was one of four wines to achieve Premier cru (first growth) status in the Bordeaux Classification of 1855. A bottle of Château Margaux 1787 holds the record as the most expensive bottle of wine ever broken, insured at $225,000.