The Seven Giants of the Urals
Seven rock formations called Man-Pupu-Nyor (little mountain of the gods) stand in the Komi Republic, a part of the Ural Mountain area of Russia. They range from 30 to 42 meters tall! The pillars formed when erosion washed away the mountain that once surrounded them over a period of 200 million years. Legend says they are evil giants who had a spell cast upon them. Link -via the Presurfer
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Group Rope Jumping
Photo by Russos
No, not Double-Dutch, and not quite Bungee jumping. The kids these days and their fads- EnglishRussia has an interesting series of pictures of the group rope-jumping craze sweeping the country.
As illustrated above, a group simultaneously jumps from a bridge (as a train bears down on them), clinging to ropes that swing them up towards the other side. No details on what kind of injuries this involves, but the line tangles don’t look encouraging.
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Cat Circus In Russia
This mini documentary has a great bit of info about the Moscow Cat Theater. Apparently shows like this are fairly common in Russia although we certainly have nothing in the states like this, at least not with cats. It’s easy to think the cats are unhappy if you saw them outside of the film, but seeing them with their owners, you can see there’s a lot of love there.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Update: For those of you who can’t watch Hulu, coconutnut has found the video on YouTube. Thanks Coconutnut!
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Russians Tried to Beat Apollo 11 in the Race to the Moon by Crash Landing a Spacecraft
A newly released recording from a British control room monitoring lunar activity in the late 1960s revealed that the Russian actually tried to beat the Americans in the race to the Moon: just hours before the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, a Russian spacecraft Luna-15 crash-landed there:
Sir Bernard Lovell, the astronomer, was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space and began tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to collect samples of lunar soil and rock and then return to Earth before the US mission.
The recordings from Jodrell’s Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 – just a few hours before the Americans lifted off. [...]
People in Jodrell’s control room can then be heard shouting "it’s landing" and "it’s going down much too fast" as they track Luna 15’s final moments before it crashes.
A voice is later heard saying: "I say, this has really been drama of the highest order."
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Luxury Russian Cruise Hunts Somali Pirates
Perhaps this is the way to deal with Somali pirates, and get a little R&R at the same time: a Russian luxury cruise line is offering wealthy customers the chance to hunt pirates!
Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.
When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.
Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.
Update 6/26/09 – It’s a hoax, though I think the proposed (morbid and not to mention unethical) solution is still a matter of interesting debate – Thanks rb!
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Soviet Russian Album Covers
English Russia has a collection of record album covers from the 70s and 80s. Looking through these, I get the feeling that I’ve seen these before, just with different faces and a language I understand. Link -via Metafilter
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The Incredible Century Old Color Photography of Prokudin-Gorsky
One hundred years ago this year, Russian photographer Sergey Produkin-Gorsky (pictured left) embarked on a project that was to define his life’s work – to photograph the vast country of Russia and its peoples in full color. Yes, that’s right color. Before the first commercial air freight flight, before the invention and testing of the tank and even before the sinking of the Titanic, Prokudin-Gorsky created an unrivalled and astonishing color record of his native country.
The process used involved a camera that would take a set of three photographs. These pictures would be monochrome but each picture would be taken using a filter of a different color. When all three monochrome pictures were projected (using light which had to be specifically colored) then the original color scene could be reconstructed.
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Sonya Loves Her Nom Noms
Remember this cute little loris who loved getting tickled? Well, it seems it’s a she, her name is Sonya, she’s from Russia and she loves her worms! I’ve always been a sucker for a gal with big brown eyes. *swoon* 
TGIF Nom nom nom!
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Past War and Present Peace: the Siege of Leningrad Then and Now
It was a terrible time and difficult for us to imagine, when people froze to death and cooked soups from their belts and wallpaper glue just to stay alive. So how do we put ourselves in their shoes and see into the past? One man has assembled a collection of disturbing images from those dark days and collaged them with colorful images from present times. The results are spectacular, stark and thought-provoking.
“The Siege of Leningrad, also known as The Leningrad Blockade was an unsuccessful military operation by the Axis (Nazi) powers to capture Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) during World War II. The siege lasted from September 9, 1941, to January 27, 1944, when a narrow land corridor to the city was established by the Soviets. The total lifting of the siege occurred on January 27, 1944. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and most destructive sieges of major cities in modern history and it was the second most costly.
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Russian Fire Extinguisher
In Soviet Russia, every man is a fire extinguisher! – via Cellar Image of the Day.
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Strange Brick Icicles
These odd formations found inside an abandoned Russian fortress are apparently the result of the Russian Army testing their alternative to napalm. The heat generated from the napalm was so intense it melted the actual bricks in the building, forming these creepy icicle like things dripping from the ceiling.
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Wolves Eating Berries!
[YouTube - Link]
In November 2008, Russia Today TV-Channel’s camera captured the life of a group of orphaned wolves growing up in the forest, as part of a scientific project to determine how predator’s “genetic memory” works.
Live video and special reports about three wolf pups living in a nature reserve in the Tver region of north-west Russia will appear each day on the RT website.
– via russiatoday
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Abandoned Nuclear Lighthouses
The Northern Soviet waters were equipped with a string of lighthouses to mark the treacherous passages through the dark times of the years. To make these remote beacons autonomous, they were powered by small nuclear reactors. EnglishRussia has the fascinating story of how that all turned out, along with some pretty cool photos.
Then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did it job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment. It sounds creepy but they broke into the reactors too causing all the structures to become radioactively polluted.
Link – via darkroastedblend
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Russian Scientists Creates Time Machine
Two Russian scientists claim a device created to investigate the origins of the universe could become the world’s first ever time machine. Scientists say the vast atom-smashing machine at the European Particle Physics Centre near Geneva could create a time tunnel.
We will probably have to wait until April 30, 2008 before it’s completed.
Link [YouTube] – Videofeber
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Weird Abandoned Structure in the Russian Forests
This strange looking abandoned structure was, as the English Russia website put it, “shot by some Russian guy in the forests of Russia”. Anyone who knows what it is? A transformer station, props from the upcoming X-Files 2 movie?
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