Gifts for the homeless are handed out during Santa Bar Crawl, Oxford, England on December 5, 2017. Here: Oxford university students on a Santa-themed pub crawl. (Photo by Greg Blatchford/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Aurorae category runner-up: Lone Tree under a Scandinavian Aurora by Tom Archer (UK). The photographer decided to explore the area around the hotel on a very crisp -35C evening in Finnish Lapland. When he found this tree, he decided to wait for the misty conditions to change and could not believe his luck when the sky cleared and the aurora came out in the perfect spot. Archer spent about an hour photographing it before his camera started to lock up because of the harsh conditions, but by then he was happy to call it a night. (Photo by Tom Archer/2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year)

Kate, Princess of Wales and her children Prince George and Princess Charlotte ride in a car behind the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II as it is pulled on a gun carriage through the streets of London following her funeral service at Westminster Abbey, Monday September 19, 2022.The Queen, who died aged 96 on Sept. 8, will be buried at Windsor alongside her late husband, Prince Philip, who died last year. (Photo by Kin Cheung/AP Photo/Pool)

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.

An Indian Sadhu, or Hindu holy man, sits for a community feast at the Sangam, the confluence of the Rivers Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati, during the annual month-long Magh Mela religious fair in Allahabad, India, Friday, January 16, 2015. Hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus are expected to take holy dips at the confluence during the astronomically auspicious period of over 45 days celebrated as Magh Mela. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

An Afghan woman fills containers with water near her temporary shelter at an internally displaced person's (IDP) camp on the outskirts of Herat, Afghanistan, January 21, 2015. Dozens of families are living in temporary shelters even in harsh winters and most depend on aid distributions by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (Photo by Jalil Rezayee/EPA)

A Sri Lankan elephant, accompanied by his mahout, browse through a roadside fruit stall in Colombo on January 19, 2015. The Sri Lankan elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as the population has declined by at least 50 percent over the last three generations, with the species threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)

Two revelers dressed as toy soldiers gesture toward a police officer in a patrol car during the traditional carnival parade in Wuerzburg, Germany, 15 February 2015. Under the motto “Carnival Parade is cool” about 160 groups with over 3,000 members took part in one of the biggest carnival parades in southern Germany. (Photo by Daniel Karmann/EPA)