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Rivers are essential to life on Earth. They provide water for drinking, irrigation, and industry. They also play a vital role in the global ecosystem, helping to regulate the climate and support biodiversity. But not all rivers are created equal. Some rivers are incredibly long, stretching for thousands of miles. Others are much shorter, measuring just a few feet or meters in length. So, which river is the shortest in the world? That's a matter of some debate. There are several rivers that all claim to be the shortest, and the title has changed hands over the years.

The Badain Jaran Desert occupies parts of China and Inner Mongolia covering an area of 49,000 sq. kilometers making it the third largest desert in China. Although not a lot of people are familiar with this desert, outside China, it is known for having the tallest stationary dunes on earth. Some of these dunes have been measured to reach heights of more than 500 meters. Badain Jaran has an extremely arid climate with an annual precipitation between 50-60mm. Nearly 40-80 times of the precipitation gets evaporated away before it falls as rainfall.

In 1647, construction workers carrying out repairs on the Church of Saint Andrew in the small city of Venzone, in the province of Udine, Italy, accidentally broke open a tomb in the churchyard. Inside was found the perfectly dried body of a man who appeared to be of average height and possibly rotund during his living days. His body had now shrunk to only 33 pounds, or about 15 kg. But curiously, it hadn’t decomposed.

Where do hairs for fashion wigs and hair extensions come from? The answer is: everywhere, but the majority of them come from China and India, where human hair is a lucrative business.

For nearly half a century, Atlantic City, in New Jersey, United States, was home to an attraction almost too fantastical to believe—an apparently fearless horse with a young woman on its back would leap off a tower some 40 feet high into a pool of water below. The stunt took place at Atlantic City's popular venue Steel Pier, where trained horses took the plunge up to four times a day and seven days a week.

Endeavor to change the course of history, has always been a primary motive of human civilization, through several centuries. It has been observed throughout history, that several times people have tried to undertake a feat which brings them in direct face-off with nature. May it be the intent to master the air by inventing airplanes, building mega-structures such as pyramids, or even stopping the flow of one of the world’s largest water resources, “The Niagara Falls”.

In the sheltered coastal waters of the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea, there are large fish farms where marine crustaceans such as shrimps, and molluscs such as oysters, are raised in artificial enclosures. These farms are created by floating netted enclosures from a sprawling network of interconnected wooden pathways and platforms. Over these, fishermen have built wooden houses and huts where entire families live.

Crisscrossing the highland plains in western Bolivia is a network of thousands of near perfectly straight lines etched into the ground. These lines do not make any figures or shapes, but they go on remarkably straight for tens of kilometers. Whoever created them worked extremely precisely, which was not easy task in this hilly terrain with rocks, shrubs and other natural obstacles.

Moss is a common plant in Iceland. It grows abundantly in the mountainous region and is a special characteristic of Iceland’s lava fields. One of the most spectacular moss blanket is located on the southern coast of Iceland, over the Eldraun Lava Field.

Kavicsos Lake, or "pebble lake" in Hungarian, is a picturesque lake around 2 km crosswise over found south of Budapest, only a 30-minute ride far from the downtown area. The lake sits at the site of a previous rock quarry, and subsequently its name. 

Fordite, also known as Detroit agate, comes in bright colors and psychedelic swirls, and are often crafted into eye-catching jewelry. But fordite is not a gemstone, rather it is dried paint that built up, layer upon layer, in factories that painted automobiles long ago. Especially in Detroit, and hence the name.

Just a 30-minute-drive away from the city of Vladivostok, Russia, lies a stunning bay surrounded by impressive cliffs. Not very long ago, the beach here was used as dumping ground of unwanted glass by a local porcelain factory, or so the story goes. According to another version, the waste glass products were washed away by the river and then swept into the sea.

The Landes region of southwestern France, bordering the Bay of Biscay, is covered by a large pine forest. In fact, it’s the largest ‘maritime pine’ forest in Europe—’maritime pine’ is a species native to the Mediterranean region. But a hundred years ago, the landscape looked very different. Instead of forests, there was a great level of plain that stretched from horizon to horizon. This plain was covered with stunted bushes and dry heath that were periodically burned off by the local population to create grazing land for sheep. Around the middle of the 19th century, there were an estimated one million sheep in this area.

In the city of Elche, in Spain, there is a large grove of palm trees that’s the only one of its kind in Europe, and one of the largest palm groves in the world. Elche has more palm trees than people. According to some estimates, there are between 200,000 and 300,000 trees here distributed across hundreds of orchards. 

Rhythmic springs are those springs that exhibit tidal characteristics. In other words, the water level of these springs rises and falls over a fairly regular time period. Sometimes the spring would stop flowing completely and start again after a couple of hours or minutes. The cause of this periodicity is not truly understood but there is a fairly sound theory.

I am not even going to wonder how this is done, just bask in the beauty of it all.  If you are one of our regular readers then you will know that we like timelapses at Kuriositas.  However, this one is different – very different.   Vyacheslav Ivanov has captured the formation of snow crystals.

Iceland never ceases to cause wonder and this beautiful footage, captured in March 2014 is no exception.  You will witness both the Northern lights and the phenomenon of the ice caves in their surreal beauty thanks to brothers Patrick and Henrick Shyu who make up Blue Eden .  Plus if you are something of a hopeless romantic then hang around till the end for something that may not make the ice melt, but almost certainly your heart.

The word sahara means desert in Arabic so when you hear the name Sahara el Beyda you could be forgiven that it means one thing – sand, sand and more sand.  Yet the sight of Egypt’s Sahara el Beyda belies the traditional way one imagines a desert.  Are those icebergs on the horizon?

In a forest in southern Småland, in southern Sweden, there is a small earthen cabin you can rent on Airbnb. The cabin is partially buried in the ground with its sod roof almost flush with the ground level, which renders the cabin nearly invisible. This type of house is known as “backstuga” in Sweden, which is literally "hill cottage". They are not very common today, but back in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the country’s poorest people lived in them.

The Grand Circle is a stunning, immense expanse of land located in the South-western United States. It encompasses parts of five states – Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Not surprisingly it also holds the largest concentration of national parks and monuments in the country. It takes in Arches National Park, Monument Valley, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Antelope Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Mesa Verde, Natural Bridges, Canyonlands, and Grand Staircase-Escalante.