The Largest Stadium - Rŭngrado May First Stadium

The Rŭngrado May First Stadium, or May Day Stadium, is a multi-purpose stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, completed on May 1, 1989.

It is currently used for football matches, a few athletics matches, but most often for the spectacular Arirang performances (also known as the Mass Games). The stadium can seat 150,000, which is the largest non-auto racing stadium capacity in the world.

Its name comes from Rungra Island in the Taedong River, upon which it is situated, and May Day, the international day celebrating labour and particularly celebrated among communists. Its scalloped roof features 16 arches arranged in a ring, and it is said to resemble a parachute or a magnolia blossom. It is not to be confused with the nearby large Kim Il-sung Stadium.

It hosts events on a main pitch sprawling across over 22,500 m² (242,200 ft²). Its total floor space is over 207,000 m² (2.2 million ft²) across eight stories, and the lobes of its roof peak at more than 60 m (197 ft) from the ground.

While the stadium is used for sporting events, it is most famous as the site of massive performances and shows celebrating Kim Il-sung and the North Korean nation. In June-July 2002 it was the site of the colossal and meticulously choreographed "Arirang" gymnastic and artistic performance (often referred to elsewhere as "mass games"). The extravaganza involved for the first time some 100,000+ participants—double the number of spectators— and was open to foreigners, a rare occurrence. Critics of the regime said the spectacle was an attempt to distract from the 2002 World Cup being co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, and an effort to raise scarce hard currency.

These unique performances are now an annual feature in Pyongyang, usually in August and September. The Guinness Book of Records has recognized these events as the largest in the world.


Source: wikipedia.org

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The Largest Snake - Titanoboa

Titanoboa was 13m (42ft) long - about the length of a bus - and lived in the rainforest of north-east Colombia 58-60 million years ago.

The snake was so wide it would have reached up to a person's hips, say researchers, who have estimated that it weighed more than a tonne.

Green anacondas - the world's heaviest snakes - reach a mere 250kg (550lbs).

Reticulated pythons - the world's longest snakes - can reach up to 10m (32ft).

The team of researchers led by Jason Head, from the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada, used a known mathematical relationship between the size of vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes to estimate the size of the ancient animal.


Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the beast's 13m-long body and 1,140kg (2,500lb) weight make it the largest snake on record.

"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty amazing," said co-author P David Polly, from Indiana University in Bloomington, US.

Researchers discovered fossilised bones belonging to the super-sized slitherers and their possible prey at Cerrejon, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines. The animal is a relative of modern boa constrictors.


Warming world

"Probably like an anaconda, it spent a lot of time in the water," said Professor Polly.

Palaeontologist Dr Jonathan Bloch looks through fossils of giant snake

"It would have needed to eat a lot.

"What its prey was exactly, we don't know. But it probably included alligators, big fish or crocodiles."

The researchers also used the reptile's size to make an estimate of Earth's temperature 58 to 60 million years ago in tropical South America.

Palaeontologists have long known that as temperatures go up and down over geological time, generally speaking, so does the upper size limit of cold-blooded creatures - or poikilotherms.

This is because the metabolism of a poikilotherm is more or less controlled by the average temperature of its environment.

Assuming the Earth today was not particularly unusual, the researchers calculated that a snake of Titanoboa's size would have required an average annual temperature of 30C to 34C (86F to 93F) to survive.

By comparison, the average yearly temperature of today's Cartagena, a Colombian coastal city, is about 28C.


Opportunity knocks 

"A snake living in the tropics would have been operating at a much higher metabolic rate," said Professor Polly.

"So snakes had the opportunity to evolve and grow as big as this one did in a way that they probably wouldn't today."

He added that as the Earth warmed up in future, cold-blooded animals could be expected to evolve larger bodies.

Dr Head adds that the find "challenges our understanding of past climates and environments, as well as the biological limitations on the evolution of giant snakes."

However, Dr Matthew Huber, a climatologist from Purdue University in Indiana, who was not connected with the study, questioned whether the link between size and temperature was "generalisable and accurate".

He commented: "Head and colleagues' findings are the result of probably the first study in 'snake palaeothermometry', and as such must be viewed with caution."

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

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The Largest Memorial Complex - Valley of the Fallen

The Valle de los Caídos (in English: Valley of the Fallen) is a monumental memorial in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected at Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid, conceived by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to honor those who fell during the Spanish Civil War. However, only two names are commemorated— those of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Franco himself. It was also claimed by Franco that the monument was meant to be a "national act of atonement". As a surviving artifact of Franco's rule, the monument and its Catholic basilica remain controversial, especially due to the manner and circumstances of its construction by political prisoners. The complex is owned and operated by the Patrimonio Nacional agency.


Valley of the Fallen

The valley that contains the monument, preserved as a national park, is located 10 km northeast of the royal site of El Escorial, northwest of Madrid. Beneath the valley floor lie the remains of 40,000, whose names are accounted for in the monument's register.

Although the valley contains both Nationalist and Republican graves – several former Republicans' bodies were moved there from temporary graves at the end of the war – the tone of the monument is distinctly Nationalist and anti-Communist, containing the inscription "¡Caídos por Dios y por España!" ("Fallen for God and Spain!"), reflecting the close ties of Franco's Nationalist regime to the Catholic Church.

Additionally, Franco's timing of his announcement of the decision to create the monument left no doubts: on 1 April 1940, the day of the victory parade to celebrate the first anniversary of his triumph over the Republic, Franco announced his personal decision to raise a splendid monument to those who had fallen in his cause.

Today, Spain's Socialist Government has been debating plans to re-designate the Valley of the Fallen a "monument to Democracy" or as a memorial to all Spaniards killed in conflict "for Democracy" (believed to mean only the Republican side). Other political organizations, among them centrist Catholic groups, believe that the monument is already dedicated to all of the dead, civilian and military of both Nationalist and Republican sides.


Franco's tomb

In 1975, after Franco's death, the site was designated by the interim government as the burial place for the Caudillo, who actually did not desire to be buried in the valley, but in Madrid. Unlike the fallen of the Civil War who were laid to rest in the valley exterior to the basilica, Franco was buried inside the church. His grave is marked by a simple tombstone engraved with his name, on the choir side of the main altar (between the altar and the apse of the Church; behind the altar, from the perspective of a person standing at the main door).

Franco was the second person buried in the Santa Cruz basilica. Franco had earlier interred José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, the Spanish fascist party that aided his ascension to power, under a modest gravestone on the nave side of the altar. Primo de Rivera died November 20, 1936, exactly 39 years before Franco, whose grave is on the exact opposite side of the altar.

Today, the Valle de los Caídos is a popular tourist site and every year, on the closest Saturday following November 20, the site is marked by memorial celebrations by Franco's nostalgic supporters and Falange activists.


Controversy in construction

"The work of construction itself was undertaken by the forced labour of 20,000 Republican prisoners, fourteen of whom were killed and many more injured; it was intended that through such work prisoners would have the opportunity to "redeem themselves". The motto used by the Spanish Nationalist government was "el trabajo enoblece" "work ennobles". Nevertheless, the use of convict labor to build the basilica and cross has been controversial. According to the project records, no more than 2,000 workers participated directly in the construction, some of them highly skilled, as required by the complexity of the work. These convicts at the workplace included those convicted of political crimes. A 1940 Spanish law recognized the possibility of "redeeming" two days of conviction for each working day. This benefit was increased to six days when labour was carried out at the basilica.

Source: wikipedia.org

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The Largest Monument - Gateway Arch

The Gateway Arch, also known as the Gateway to the West, is an integral part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and the iconic image of St. Louis, Missouri. It was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel in 1947. It stands 630 feet (192 m) tall, and is 630 feet (192 m) wide at its base, making it the tallest monument in the United States. Construction of the arch started on February 12, 1963 and was completed on October 28, 1965. The monument opened to the public on July 10, 1967.

The cross-sections of its legs are equilateral triangles, narrowing from 54 feet (16 m) per side at the base to 17 feet (5.2 m) at the top. Each wall consists of a stainless steel skin covering a sandwich of two carbon steel walls with reinforced concrete in the middle from ground level to 300 feet (91 m), with carbon steel and rebar from 300 feet (91 m) to the peak. The interior of the Arch is hollow and contains a unique transport system leading to an observation deck at the top. The interior of the Arch also contains two emergency stairwells of 1076 steps each, in the event of a need to evacuate the Arch or if a problem develops with the tram system.

The base of each leg at ground level had an engineering tolerance of one sixty-fourth of an inch or the two legs would not meet at the top.

During construction, both legs were built up simultaneously. When the time came to connect both legs together at the apex, thermal expansion of the sunward facing south leg prevented it from aligning precisely with the north leg. This alignment problem was solved when the St. Louis Fire Department sprayed the south leg with water from firehoses until it had cooled to the point where it aligned with the north leg.
It is the tallest habitable structure in Missouri, 7 feet higher than the 623 foot spire of One Kansas City Place in Kansas City, and 37 feet higher than the roof of Metropolitan Square in St. Louis, Missouri.

Observation area

Near the top of the arch, the rider exits the compartment and climbs a slight grade to enter the arched observation area. Thirty-two small windows (16 per side) measuring 7 by 27 inches (180 mm × 690 mm) allow views across the Mississippi River and southern Illinois with its prominent Mississippian culture mounds to the east at Cahokia Mounds, and the City of Saint Louis and St. Louis County to the west beyond the city. On a clear day, one can see up to thirty miles (48 km).

Source: wikipedia.org

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The largest dead snake ever found, over 50 feet.

World's largest snake found dead in India This is a
video of the largest snake ever discovered. The Titanobia, long thought
to be extinct, measured over 50 feet long and was found by...

The worlds largest snake ever found :)

Kids React to Largest Dead Snake Video:

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The Largest Christmas Tree - 110,35 meters

The largest Christmas tree in the world has been built in Mexico City, it is 110.35 meters tall, and made it into the Guinness Book of Records.

The artificial Christmas tree structure made of steel wires was erected on Reforma Avenue in Mexico City-setting the new world record for the Tallest artificial Christmas tree.

It’s covered in 1.2 million light bulbs and a mere 80 kilometres of cable.

Guinness Records Representative, Carlos Martinez, said: “Today, we took all the official measurements which show a height of 110 metres and 35 centimetres. This is a new record for the world’s biggest Christmas tree.”

The new record exceeds by 24 centimeters (9.5 inches) the Christmas tree in Aracaju, Brazil, the city that had held the record since 2007 with a tree 110.11 meters (361.25 feet) high.

The lighting of the gigantic tree was carried out at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, marking the beginning of the Christmas festivities in the Mexican capital, where some 19 million people live.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard headed the tree-lighting ceremony, during which the Shola Cantorum orchestra and the Mariachi Gama Mil band played Christmas music.

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The Largest Lake

The Largest Lake In The World

The Caspian Sea (Russian: Каспийское море, Persian: دریای مازندران یا دریای خزرDaryâ-ye Mâzandarân , Azerbaijani: Xezer Denizi) is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of 371,000 square kilometres
(143,244 sq mi) and a volume of 78,200 cubic kilometres (18,761 cu mi). It is in an endorheic basin (it has no outflows) and is bounded by northern Iran, southern Russia, western Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and eastern Azerbaijan. It has a maximum depth of about 1,025 metres (3,363 ft).

The ancient inhabitants of its littoral perceived the Caspian as an ocean, probably because of its saltiness and seeming boundlessness. It has a salinity of approximately 1.2%, about a third the salinity of most seawater. Caspian is called Qazvin (قزوين or بحر قزوين) on ancient maps. In Iran, it is sometimes referred to as Daryâ-ye Mâzandarân (دریای مازندران).

Geological history
Like the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea is a remnant of the ancient Paratethys Sea. The Caspian Sea became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea level. During warm and dry climatic periods, the landlocked sea has all but dried up, depositing evaporitic sediments like halite that have become covered by wind-blown deposits and were sealed off as an evaporite sink when cool, wet climates refilled the basin. Due to the current inflow of fresh water, the Caspian Sea is a fresh-water lake in its northern portions. It is more saline on the Iranian shore, where the catchment basin contributes little flow. Currently, the mean salinity of the Caspian is one third that of the Earth's oceans. The Garabogazköl embayment, which dried up when water flow from the main body of the Caspian was blocked in the 1980s but has since been restored, routinely exceeds oceanic salinity by a factor of 10.


Geography
The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world and accounts for 40 to 44 percent of the total lacustrine waters of the world. The coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The Caspian is divided into three distinct physical regions: the Northern, Middle, and Southern Caspian. The North-Middle boundary is the Mangyshlak threshold, which runs through Chechen Island and Cape Tiub-Karagan. The Middle-South boundary is the Apsheron threshold, a sill of tectonic origin that runs through Zhiloi Island and Cape Kuuli. The Garabogazköl bay is the saline eastern inlet of the Caspian, which is part of Turkmenistan and at times has been a lake in its own right due to the isthmus which cuts it off from the Caspian.

Divisions between the three regions are dramatic. The Northern Caspian only includes the Caspian shelf, and is characterized as very shallow; it accounts for less than one percent of the total water volume with an average depth of only 5–6 metres (16–20 ft). The sea noticeably drops off towards the Middle Caspian, where the average depth is 190 metres (623 ft). The Southern Caspian is the deepest, with a depth that reaches over 1,000 metres (3,281 ft). The Middle and Southern Caspian account for 33 percent and 66 percent of the total water volume, respectively. The northern portion of the Caspian Sea typically freezes in the winter, and in the coldest winters, ice will form in the south.

Over 130 rivers provide inflow to the Caspian, with the Volga River being the largest. The Caspian also has several small islands; they are primarily located in the North and have a collective land area of roughly 2,000 km2 (770 sq mi). Adjacent to the North Caspian is the Caspian Depression, a low-lying region 27 metres (89 ft) below sea level. The Central Asian steppes stretch across the northeast coast, while the Caucasus mountains hug the Western shore. The biomes to both the north and east are characterized by cold, continental deserts. Conversely, the climate to the southwest and south are generally warm with uneven elevation due to a mix of highlands and mountain ranges; the drastic changes in climate alongside the Caspian have led to a great deal of biodiversity in the region.

The Largest Freshwater Lake
Lake Superior (French: Lac Supérieur) is the largest of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and is the world's third-largest freshwater lake by volume.

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, and empties into Lake Huron via the St. Marys River and the Soo Locks. Lake Baikal in Russia is larger by volume, as is Lake Tanganyika. The Caspian Sea, while larger than Lake Superior in both surface area and volume, is brackish; though presently isolated, historically the Caspian has been repeatedly connected to and isolated from the Mediterranean via the Black Sea.

Lake Superior has a surface area of 31,820 square miles (82,413 km2) — which is larger than South Carolina. It has a maximum length of 350 miles (563 km) and maximum breadth of 160 miles (257 km). Its average depth is 482 feet (147 m) with a maximum depth of 1,332 feet (406 m). Lake Superior contains 2,900 cubic miles (12,100 km³) of water. There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America with 1 foot (30 cm) of water. The shoreline of the lake stretches 2,726 miles (4,387 km) (including islands).

Source: wikipedia.org

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The Largest Privately Owned Yacht - Octopus

Octopus is currently the world's eighth largest superyacht, owned by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, to whom she was delivered in 2003. Octopus is the third largest superyacht that is not owned by a head of state, measuring 414 feet (126 m).

Octopus sports two helicopters on the top deck (one in front and one on the back), and a 63-foot (19 m) tender docked in the transom (one of seven aboard). The yacht also has a pool on board, located aft on one of her upper decks, and two submarines: one operated by remote control for studying the bottom of the ocean. Side hatches at the water line form a dock for jet skis.

The exterior was designed by Espen Øino Naval Architects and built by the German shipbuilders Lürssen in Bremen and HDW in Kiel. Her hull is made of steel. The interior was designed by American designer Jonathan Quinn Barnett of Seattle.

Allen also owns Tatoosh, also one of the world's 100 largest yachts.

Source: wikipedia.org

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World's Largest Book - Kuthodaw Pagoda

The world's largest book stands upright, set in stone, in the grounds of the Kuthodaw (literally - royal merit) pagoda at the foot of Mandalay Hill in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma). It has 730 leaves and 1460 pages; each page is three and a half feet wide, five feet tall and five inches thick. Each stone tablet has its own roof and precious gem on top in a small cave-like structure of Sinhalese relic casket type called kyauksa gu (stone inscription cave in Burmese), and they are arranged around a central golden pagoda.

 
Royal merit
The pagoda itself was built as part of the traditional foundations of the new royal city which also included a pitakat taik or library for religious scriptures, but King Mindon wanted to leave a great work of merit for posterity meant to last five millennia after the Gautama Buddha who lived around 500 BC. When the British invaded southern Burma in the mid nineteenth century, Mindon Min was concerned that Buddhist dhamma (teachings) would also be detrimentally affected in the North where he reigned. As well as organizing the Fifth Buddhist Synod in 1871, he was responsible for the construction in Mandalay of the world's largest book, consisting of 729 large marble tablets with the Tipitaka Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism inscribed on them in gold. One more was added to record how it all came about, making it 730 stone inscriptions in total.

The marble was quarried from Zagyin Hill 32 miles north of Mandalay, and transported by river to the city. Work began on 14 October 1860 in a large shed near Mandalay Palace. The text had been meticulously edited by tiers of senior monks and lay officials consulting the Tipitaka (literally - the three baskets, namely Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka and Abhidhamma Pitaka) kept in royal libraries in the form of peisa or palm leaf manuscripts. Scribes carefully copied the text on marble for stonemasons. Each stone has 80 to 100 lines of inscription on each side in round Burmese script, chiselled out and originally filled in with gold ink. It took a scribe three days to copy both the obverse and the reverse sides, and a stonemason could finish up to 16 lines a day. All the stones were completed and open to the public on 4 May 1868.

Assembly and contents
The stones are arranged in neat rows within three enclosures, 42 in the innermost, 168 in the middle and 519 in the outermost enclosure. The caves are numbered starting from the west going clockwise (let ya yit) forming complete rings as follows:

Enclosure	Cave number	Pitaka
inner	1 - 42	Vinaya Pitaka
middle near	43 - 110	Vinaya
middle far	111 - 210	111 Vinaya, Abhidhamma Pitaka 112 - 210
outer nearest	211 -309	Abhidhamma
outermost perimeter	310 - 465	Abhidhamma 310 - 319, Sutta Pitaka 320 - 417, Samyutta Nikaya 418 - 465
outermost next in	466 - 603	Samyutta 466 - 482, Anguttara Nikaya 483 - 560, Khuddaka Nikaya 561 - 603
outermost near	604 - 729	Khuddaka

Thirty years later in 1900, a print copy of the text came out in a set of 38 volumes in Royal Octavo size of about 400 pages each in great primer type of letters. The publisher, Philip H. Ripley of Hanthawaddy Press, claimed that his books were "true copies of the Pitaka inscribed on stones by King Mindon". Ripley was a Burmese born Armenian brought up in the royal court of Mandalay by the king and went to school with the royal princes including Thibaw Min, the last king of Burma. At the age of 17 he fled to Rangoon when palace intrigues and a royal massacre broke out after the death of King Mindon, and he did have the galley proofs checked against the stones.

Source: wikipedia.org


More:
  The world's biggest-ever book has been launched in the US - but it is not for bedtime reading.

The book weighs 60 kilograms (133 pounds) and the pages are two metres wide (seven foot).

Michael Hawley, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of the 122-page book about the Asian country of Bhutan.

The limited edition book is on sale for $10,000, with profits going to the charity he founded, Friendly Planet.
The charity builds schools in Cambodia and Bhutan.

Guinness World Records has certified Mr Hawley's work as the biggest book published. Five hundred copies have been produced.

Picture display
The book, Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Kingdom measures 1.5 metres by two metres (five-by-seven feet). It is photographic account of a journey across the kingdom of Bhutan.
Mr Hawley has led a number of students to expeditions to Cambodia and Bhutan and thought he could raise money for education there by putting together some of the pictures he had gathered.
He said he had not set out to make the world's largest book, but he discovered, while playing around with a digital printer, how spectacular large digital images can look, especially Bhutan which is a country full of colour in its everyday life.

"What I really wanted was a 5-by-7-foot chunk of wall that would let me change the picture every day," he said.

"And I thought there was an old-fashioned mechanism that might work. It's called the book."

But he said people should not think of it as a book but as "a gigantic picture gallery where you can change the picture every day".
He said it was not a bedtime book as it could flatten the reader if it fell over.
Despite the hefty price tag, Mr Hawley said he had already received two dozen orders of the book.

Source: bbc.co.uk

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