A 20 metre high spiral staircase in a tower used as an emergency exit, is seen inside a Federal Reserve bank (Bundesbank) bunker, prior to the bunker's official opening to the public in Cochem, Germany, March 18, 2016. West Germany's Central Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank) stored some 20 billion German marks of emergency notes in two underground bunkers, one in Frankfurt the other in Cochem, between 1964-1988 during the cold war. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)

Meirav Stardinner receives a snake massage from Ada Barak at Barak's snake spa on September 11, 2008 in Talmei Elazar, Israel. Barack's income comes mostly from exhibiting her plants which eat everything from insects to small mammals. She discovered snakes' therapeutic value after letting people hold them after her act “Some people said that holding the snakes made them feel better, relaxed”, she says. “One old lady said it was soothing, like a cold compress”. Now she uses a combination of big snakes for deep massage and little ones for light massage, though all are non-venemous. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

A photographer has discovered a spectacular way of keeping warm during winter – using fire to heat up icy locations. Sam Scholes uses long-exposures to capture the movement of fire in front of ice-covered backdrops. After lighting steel wool his friend Scott Stringham swings the flaming object in order to make swirling patterns. The result of this technique – captured at Midway Ice Castles in Utah is a vibrant image with the warm light dancing across the cold scenes. (Photo by Sam Scholes/Caters News)

In this photo taken Tuesday, February 2, 2016, asylum seekers gather round a fire as they cook a meal overlooking the temporary Altnes camp refugee camp on the island of Seiland, northern Norway. Waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, hundreds of people in emergency shelters in Hammerfest and neighboring towns are slowly getting used to the extreme climate and unfamiliar customs of the High North. They say they have adapted to the cold – the temperature rarely drops below minus 10 degrees C (14 F) along the coast, though it gets much colder further inland. It’s the darkness that throws them off. (Photo by Alastair Grant/AP Photo)

Photo: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924) lying in state in the Kremlin. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1924

Important! For the same article in Russian language click here.

Something quite intriguing is happening within Russian-speaking internet during the last few – should you type a fully academic inquiry (at least, according to Russian academic requirements) in national search engines for "Lenin's mausoleum" – the first thing you get (even in top 10 searches) is website pages talking about black magic and occult. Website authors view this construction differently, but unconditionally agree on one thing: the mausoleum of the "leader of the world proletariat” – the essence of a magical artifact, a sort of “energy vampire”. It was built with a certain purpose: to drain the energy out of miserable Soviet citizens on one hand; and to poison the anthroposphere of one-sixth part of the earth with its vibes (the exact territory that was occupied by the former Soviet Union), depriving the Russian people of will to resist on the other hand. Complete nonsense? No doubt. Nevertheless, an intriguing one. Well, probably because some oddities do exist in mausoleum's history. These oddities are the thing we are going to discuss this time. First, let me refresh you memory on the subject.

World War Two veteran Abla Begaliyev, 91, is seen in an undated handout picture (L), poses for a picture in Arashan (Top R) and at home in Kyrgyzstan April 14, 2015. Begaliyev served in the border guard cavalry from February 1942 until April 1947. Originally from Kyrgyzstan, he fought on the Ukrainian front and relocated to the border with Afghanistan at the end of World War Two. As the world marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Reuters photographers the length and breadth of the former Soviet republics (CCCP) captured portraits of Red Army veterans, mostly now in their 80s and 90s, today and through archive pictures at the time. More than 20 million Soviet citizens were killed in the war. (Photo by Vladimir Pirogov/Reuters/Family handout (L))

Aviation enthusiast Patrick Wilson 8, from Wetherby looks at an Avro 504 k at “The Shuttlesworth Collection” at Old Warden on July 21, 2014 in Biggleswade, England. Of the 55,000 planes that were manufactured by the Royal Army Corps (RAC) during WWI, only around 20 remain in airworthy condition. Six of these belong to The Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, Bedfordshire, making it the most complete collection of original airworthy WWI aircraft in the world. Amongst the collection is the SE5a. The SE5a is a single seater fighter aircraft. It is an original biplane designed by the Royal Aircraft Factory, with its engine built by Wolseley Motors Ltd, and it was issued to 84 Squadron in November 1918. The National Archive in Kew has recently verified that the plane saw action in France with 84 Squadron the day before Armistice, November 10, 1918. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)