The qualities of Naftalan oil has been known since ancient times. In the 13th centaury AD, the famous explorer Marko Polo who was passing through Azerbaijan on his way from Venice to China mentioned about Naftalan oil which he saw being loaded on to camels. He noted the oil’s therapeutic properties and how it could treat humans and animals with skin diseases. Modern use of the oil started during the 1870s under Czarist Russia. By 1912, a German joint-stock company was founded to export and trade the oil, which was used as a treatment in the Russo-Japanese War.

Photo by Chloe Dewe Mathews

Naftalan oil’s magical properties were discovered way back in the 6th century BC. According to legends, a passing merchants’ caravan left a sick camel to die in the muddy waters of a lake near the town. One their way back, the merchants found the camel happily bathing in the waters of the lake apparently cured of its sickness. Upon inspecting the lake, the caravan’s people found black oily liquid beneath the muddy waters and understood that the sick animal was cured by it. They covered their hand’s and feet’s sores with the black oil and were convinced of its healing powers. After that the people from nearby villages stared to use the miracle liquid as medicine.

Naftalan crude oil is indeed different from the commercial grade variety used to make petroleum. Naftalan crude contains about 50 percent naphthalene, a hydrocarbon used in mothballs. It is also an active ingredient in coal tar soaps, which are used by dermatologists to treat psoriasis. Although the National Agency for Research on Cancer, an American government agency, classifies naphthalene as a possible carcinogen, no one has concluded whether regular baths in Naftalan oil cause cancer. Gyultikin Suleymanova, the lead doctor at Health Center, a spa that opened in 2005, said the therapeutic benefits are a product of natural antibiotic and anti-inflammatory agents that seep into the skin.

A crude oil bath usually lasts for 10 minutes during which visitors lie naked in a pool of thick, black, lukewarm oil up to their neck, followed by almost 40 minutes of scrubbing with a wooden spatula and paper towels and multiple trips to the shower. For three days after a bath, the saturated skin continue to ooze crude oil.

The gross part is that the oil is recycled, which is no surprise, given the cost of oil these day. Each bath uses about a barrel of crude, and after the bath is over, the oil goes back to a communal tank for future bathers.

A single bath costs between $200 to $240.

Photo by Amanda Rivkin

Photo by Chloe Dewe Mathews

Photo by Chloe Dewe Mathews

Photo by Chloe Dewe Mathews

Photo by Chloe Dewe Mathews

Photo by Chloe Dewe Mathews

Sources: Naftalangroup, The National

This is the very first Legoland Hotel in North America. (There are two more in the world, one in Windsor, England in the other in Billund, Denmark.) The moment you walk in the door you’ll notice how this hotel was made with kids in mind from the many play pits to the huge Castle Play area.

In one spot, there’s a group of six construction men all lined up in a row, no doubt a secret nod to the people who built the hotel.

Moving back and forth in front of the wall is a large Lego sculpture of a surfer holding his surfboard and riding his red bicycle. The wheels of the bike act like magnifying glasses so those in front of the desk can make out the small details in the minifigures.

On one side of the wall is a Lego skyline that includes nine buildings and 35 different scenes, like this pool one. Each of the scenes flash on at different times. If you wait, you’ll start to notice them all.

Gracing the other walls are these groups of celebrity signed stars. Every time someone like Kate Beckinsale, Hugh Jackman or Mark Wahlberg visits Legoland, the amusement park gets one of their model builders to create one of these so that the celebrities can sign one before they leave.

Bricks Family Restaurant

Bricks Family Restaurant is considered the most formal out of all the restaurants in this hotel. It’s where 18 Lego chefs prepare fresh meals daily.

Inside Bricks, there’s a buffet station for both adults and kids! The chefs include healthy food options and then display them at a height kids can reach.

Elevator

Near the first floor elevator is this funny Legoman wearing a hazmat suit, shouting, “Hey! Was that you!” He’s pointing to a Whoopee Cushion area on the carpet. Step onto that spot if you’d like to hear a funny sound.

Have you ever been inside a disco elevator? As you enter, you’ll be fully immersed in the disco experience, lights, music and all.

Hallway Decor

There are three major themes running throughout the hotel: Pirate, Adventure and Kingdom. As you step outside the elevator, a Lego sculpture greets you with a loud welcome message. There are seven animated Lego models inside the hotel that are activated by motion or sound. This pirate is one of them.

The wallpaper in some of the hallways are quite decorative and feature Lego figures in the themes we mentioned before. Also, check out the carpet.

On the Pirate floor, in front of some of the doors, the carpet gives off the illusion that water is pouring out of it.

Some of the doors have two peepholes, one for the adult and one for the child. Notice the burning torch outside the room is made out of Legos.

The premium themed room can accommodate up to 5 people. It holds both a queen-sized bed, a bunk bed and a trundle bed. Every room has a separate sleeping area for up to three kids and houses their own television.

Fun fact! There are at least eight Lego models inside every room!

Legoland hotel gave us this copy of the scavenger hunt-style sheet kids can expect to find in their room.

Legoland Hotel website
Photo credit: Alice Yoo

via [Mymodernmet]

• 
• Help Shopping
  
• Open Doors
  
• Paying for Groceries
  
• Helping with Laundry
  
• Help Shopping
  
• Carrying Laggage
  
• 

  Using ATM

  

What if different species could mate? Redditor gyyp imagines just what that would look like and shares his Photoshopped creations for the world to look on in disbelief and wonder. The photo manipulator’s Weird Animals collection pairs ducks with elephants, pugs with gorillas, guinea pigs with eagles, sharks with horses, killer whales with penguins, and the list goes on.

• Weird animals
  

  Gyyp’s mastery in photo manipulation allows the mind to realistically visualize and process the monsters this digital Dr. Frankenstein has created. The head of one creature blends seamlessly into the other, regardless of actual size or whether they are land or sea dwelling animals. Some of the amalgamated beasts are frightening while others make you wish they actually existed (why isn’t there a cuddly guinea pig lion?), but mostly they’re just very, very weird.

  
• strange animals

  
• photoshoped animals

  
• morphed animals

  
• weird species

  
• odd species

  
• weird animals

  

• 

• 

• 

• 
• 

Photo credit

Although pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations are found all over the world, the Taum Sauk plant is notable in that it is a pure pump-back operation – there is no natural primary flow available for generation, unlike most other pumped storage sites. It was among the largest such projects when it was built.

Construction of the Taum Sauk plant began in 1960 and operation began in 1963. The two original reversible pump-turbine units were each capable of generating 175 megawatts of power. They were upgraded in 1999 to units capable of 225 megawatts each. In 2005, the plant had to shut down when the upper reservoir suffered a catastrophic failure releasing 4 million cubic-meters of water in twelve minutes and sending a 20 foot crest of water down the Black River. The torrent of water roared into the Taum Sauk State park sweeping away the park superintendent’s home and critically injuring his three small children.

The plant returned to service after a gap of four years. The rebuilt upper reservoir is now considered an engineering milestone, being the largest roller-compacted concrete dam in North America. To prevent another catastrophe, five back-up systems are now in place and nine cameras dot the reservoir’s perimeter giving 24-hour surveillance to crews manning the facility around the clock.

Before the failure of the upper Reservoir visitors could usually drive to the top of Proffit Mountain and walk a ramp to an observation deck at the top of the reservoir. At the entrance gate there was also a museum highlighting the natural history of Missouri. The power plant was frequently visited by geology students because of a striking example of Precambrian/Cambrian unconformity in the rock layers exposed by the plant’s construction.

Photo credit

Photo credit

Photo credit

Photo credit

Photo credit

Photo credit

Photo credit

The upper reservoir after the parameter breach. Photo credit

 Photo credit: Roland Barthofer
via [LikeCool]

Here’s video of the Remote Operated Vehicles recovering the engines from the ocean floor.

The F-1 rocket engine is still a modern wonder — one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, the world watched as five particular F-1 engines fired in concert, beginning the historic Apollo 11 mission. Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

“We’re excited to be bringing a couple of your F-1s home,” Bezos said to NASA.

F-1 Thrust Chamber on ocean floor. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

And Boing Boing has a statement from NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden:

Nearly one year ago, Jeff Bezos shared with us his plans to recover F-1 engines that helped power Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We share the excitement expressed by Jeff and his team in announcing the recovery of two of the powerful Saturn V first-stage engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit.

We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display.

Jeff and his colleagues at Blue Origin are helping to usher in a new commercial era of space exploration and we are confident that our continued collaboration will soon result in private human access to space, creating jobs and driving America’s leadership in innovation and exploration.

And here is a snip from the blog post by Bezos, just published moments ago:

What an incredible adventure. We are right now onboard the Seabed Worker headed back to Cape Canaveral after finishing three weeks at sea, working almost 3 miles below the surface. We found so much. We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program. We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.Many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult. We might see more during restoration. The objects themselves are gorgeous. The technology used for the recovery is in its own way as otherworldly as the Apollo technology itself. The Remotely Operated Vehicles worked at a depth of more than 14,000 feet, tethered to our ship with fiber optics for data and electric cables transmitting power at more than 4,000 volts. We on the team were often struck by poetic echoes of the lunar missions. The buoyancy of the ROVs looks every bit like microgravity. The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep sea fish broke the illusion.

Thrust Chamber and Fuel Manifold. Photo: Bezos Expeditions