The Great Dismal Swamp is a marshy area in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, between Norfolk, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It is located in parts of southern Virginia cities Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina counties Gates, Pasquotank and Camden. It is a southern swamp, one of many along the Atlantic Ocean's coast, including the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp in Florida, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, the Congaree and Four Holes swamps of South Carolina, and some of the Carolina bays in the Carolinas and Georgia. Along the eastern edge runs the Dismal Swamp Canal, completed in 1805.

The Mano de Desierto is a large-scale sculpture of a hand located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, 75 km to the south of the city of Antofagasta, on the Panamerican Highway. The nearest point of reference is the “Ciudad Empresarial La Negra” (La Negra Business City). The sculpture was constructed by the Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal at an altitude of 1,100 meters above sea level. Irarrázabal used the human figure to express emotions like injustice, loneliness, sorrow and torture. Its exaggerated size is said to emphasize human vulnerability and helplessness. The work has a base of iron and cement, and stands 11 metres (36 ft) tall. Funded by Corporación Pro Antofagasta, a local booster organization, the sculpture was inaugurated on March 28, 1992.

Capybaras bathe in the hot spring water at the Saitama Children's zoo in Higashi Matsuyama city, Saitama prefecture on December 25, 2013. 13 capybaras in the zoo, originally from South America, enjoyed the hot spring water. (Photo by Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP Photo)

Members of the Al-Baraa bin Malek batallion, part of the Free Syria Army's Al-Fatah brigade, duck to the ground as they pull a man (R) who was shot by a sniper twice in the Bustan al-Basha district of the northern city of Aleppo on October 20, 2012. (Photo by Javier Manzano/AFP Photo)

It has taken 3,000 hours and 34 years to make – but the results are incredible. Artist Scott Weaver has created a huge but incredibly detailed model of San Francisco using 100,000 toothpicks. The work entitled Rolling Through the Bay also doubles as a marble run. Ping pong balls dropped on several ramps at the top of the model follow several “tours” through the city. They pass matchstick replicas of sights such as Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge and the city's trademark terraced houses on steep hills.

A tractor trailer drives through flash flood waters that overran Skunk Creek, Tuesday, August 19, 2014, in northwestern Phoenix. Flooding from heavy rain in the Phoenix area has forced authorities to close several major roads, including a portion of Interstate 17 about 25 miles north of the city. (Photo by Matt York/AP Photo)

A worker lays rails across the bed of a drained area of a lake used for the production of salt at the Sasyk-Sivash lake near the city of Yevpatoria in Crimea, October 5, 2014. The area has a long tradition of salt production, prepared from salt flats flooded with water from the Black Sea. (Photo by Pavel Rebrov/Reuters)

Few people haven’t heard about the ancient city of Persepolis, which lies at the foot of the Mountain of Mercy (Kuh-I-Rahmat). In ancient times, Persepolis was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. Regretfully, it was burned by the Greeks in 330 BC after they looted the immense treasure of this city. It is said that Greeks needed 5,000 camels and 20,000 mules to carry all the treasures from Persepolis. The only thing of Persepolis that has survived the wear of time is the ginormous stone terrace 530 by 330 meters adorned by elaborate stone sculptures. It is amazing how intricately detailed some of the sculptures are, despite the fact that they were created many centuries ago.