Year: 2020
Strange UFO?
A curious piece of footage from Brazil shows a strange unidentified flying object which bears an uncanny resemblance to a jellyfish. The puzzling anomaly was recorded over the city of Sao Paolo last month and the video of the strange sighting subsequently popped up online this past weekend. Unfortunately, aside from those details, there is no other information surrounding the circumstances in which the scene was filmed.
In the footage, the UFO initially appears as a fairly indistinct anomaly high in the sky and far away from the person behind the camera. However, when they zoom in on the object, one can see that it appears to have a dome-like top with some tentacles, for lack of a better word, dangling from it. Since appearing online, the video has been picked up by several YouTube channels devoted to odd aerial anomalies and, in turn, various suggestions for the nature of the object have been offered.
The most prominent possibilities put forward by UFO enthusiasts is that the anomaly is either some kind of alien craft or, failing that, a heretofore unidentified flying creature. More skeptical observers have offered a different take, arguing that the oddity is either a balloon or a jellyfish kite. The latter theory seems to have some merit, although the height and distance of the mystery object raise some doubts about that.
I googled jellyfish kite. Got a picture. Sure looks like a jellyfish kite.
Rare World War II Photos
U.S. soldiers inspecting destroyed German tank Italy 1944
Hitler touring conquered Paris 1940
Atomic Bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki 1945
Hitler declaring war on the United States after Pearl Harbor attack
Ruins of Dresden, Germany after Allied carpet bombing
Ninth Air Force A-20s return to the Pointe du Hoe coastal battery on 22 May 1944. This installation was one of the first objectives captured during the D-Day invasion.
Captured German soldiers after D-Day invasion
Nuremberg Rally
Russian soldiers smoking in the trenches
Aircraft Carrier USS Lexington in the Pacific Theatre 1944
Moscow Gets Disneyland Type Theme Park: Dream Island
Dream Island (Russian: Остров Мечты; Ostrov Mechty) is an amusement park in Moscow that opened 29 February 2020. It is the largest indoor theme park in Europe.
The park covers 300,000 square meters. The appearance is in the style of a fairytale castle similar to Disneyland. The park has 29 unique attractions with many rides, as well as pedestrian malls with fountains and cycle paths. The complex includes a landscaped park along with a concert hall, a cinema, a hotel, a children’s sailing school, restaurants and shops.
The value of investment is $1.5 billion. Construction of the park began in March 2016. Construction was halted in early 2017 for financial reasons but was re-financed and restarted by late 2017.
There are nine themed zones, including Hotel Transylvania licensed from Sony Pictures, the Smurfs, licensed from Belgian company IMPS, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Viacom, and Hello Kitty from Sanrio of Japan. Five characters were created by artists specifically for the park, such as Mowgli in the land of the dinosaurs, the world of Pinocchio and Papa Carlo, and the Castle of the Snow Queen.
There are promenades resembling the streets of world capitals and famous cities, including Rome, with the Colosseum in miniature; Barcelona with Gaudi’s buildings; and London. The park’s 72 acres are covered by Europe’s largest glass dome, to allow operation during Moscow’s winters.
Admission for a family of four on weekends is 11,000 rubles, or about US$163.
Wild Clouds
Crimean Bridge, Krasnodar Krai, Russia
Paris, France
Two very Unique Hotels
The world’s first guitar-shaped hotel has officially opened for business. Standing 450 feet tall is the new face of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida—a surprisingly striking piece of architecture considering (or because?) it resembles a giant instrument.
The curvaceous building is part of a $1.5 billion expansion on the existing entertainment complex that wrapped up construction this summer. Designed by Hard Rock International’s go-to architect, Steve Peck of the Las Vegas-based firm Klai Juba Wald Architecture, the unprecedented structure took nearly 10 years to design and build. The 36-story hotel is the type of architectural landmark fit for the Hard Rock brand; it even features a rockin’ light show across its reflective glass facade.
Created in conjunction with DeSimone Consulting Engineers, who led the engineering on the project, the tower blends into the dark sky at night. The design team worked with Boston lighting designer DCL and Montreal digital agency Float4 to integrate 16,800 V-sticks (strips of LED video fixtures) on the rim of the guitar and the six vertical strings that run down its middle. Each evening, the hotel becomes a temporary light installation with interactive choreography set to music from Float4 and LED experts SACO Technologies.
Hotel Inntel Zaandam, Netherlands
Zaan is known for its charming and iconic green cottages. They just aren’t usually stacked 11 stories high to make one gigantic hotel that many have deemed an architectural monstrosity.
Inspired by the small cottages of the region and Claude Monet’s painting of the blue house of Zaandam, architect Wilfried van Winden set about creating a hotel that was both futuristic and retro simultaneously. Complete with 160 rooms, Turkish baths, a bar, and a swimming pool, Winden’s masterpiece has all the regular amenities of a hotel. Yet its design manages to allude to the idea that there is no place like home.
Altogether, the exterior features nearly 70 cottage facades, each with a varied shade of green and different window layout. Topped off with a red-orange roof, the stacked-cottage Inntel Hotel is one of the first parts of a revitalization campaign in the city, aimed at restoring its buildings without losing the charm of the town’s trademark architecture.
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