Smoke rises from the sauna as Eda Veeroja walks past with birch twigs at Mooska farm near the village of Haanja December 20, 2014. Smoke saunas are usually built without chimney and have a stove that rest on boulders where firewood is burnt until the room heats up. When the smoke is gone and the room reaches the right temperature, people sit inside and whisk each other with birch twigs. The tradition of the smoke sauna in Voromaa vicinity, in the south of Estonia, is enlisted in the UNESCO representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. (Photo by Ints Kalnins/Reuters)

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.

“The saguaro (scientific name Carnegiea gigantea) is a large, tree-sized cactus species in the monotypic genus Carnegiea. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. state of Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, a small part of Baja California in the San Felipe Desert and an extremely small area of California, U.S. The saguaro blossom is the State Wildflower of Arizona”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Daniel Appel (L), a firefighter with Engine 84 from the Lassen National Forest in California and Mike Hallen, (R), Arizona representative of the National Register of Big Trees, measure the circumference of this Saguaro cactus called the "Grand One," in the Tonto National Forest on July 1, 2005 35 miles north of Phoenix, near Carefree, Arizona. The cactus, estimated to be more than 200 years old, measures a circumference of 7 feet, 10 inches (2.4 meters) and stands 46 feet high (14 meters). The cactus was burned in the Cave Creek Complex fire and may not survive. It was once the largest Saguaro in the world, two others have been found recently that have tied it's measurements. The fire has burned more than 214,000 acres of the Sonoran desert. (Photo by Jeff Topping/Getty Images)

“Igor Sikorsky (May 25, 1889 – October 26, 1972), born Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was a Russian American pioneer of aviation in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. He designed and flew the world's first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft, the Russky Vityaz in 1913, and the first airliner, Ilya Muromets, in 1914. After immigrating to the United States in 1919, Sikorsky founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in 1923, and developed the first of Pan American Airways' ocean-conquering flying boats in the 1930s. In 1939 Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky would modify the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world's first mass-produced helicopter in 1942”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Westland Sikorsky H-5's, used by British European Airways Helicopters, which fly between London and Birmingham. The Sikorsky H-5, (aka R-5, S-51, HO3S-1, or Horse) (R-5 until 1948; company designation VS-327) is a helicopter built by Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, formerly used by the United States Air Force, and its predecessor, the United States Army Air Forces, as well as the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard (with the designations HO2S and HO3S). (Photo by Harrison /Topical Press Agency/Getty Images). 22nd May 1951

A Uyghur boy sits atop a horse as he has his picture taken outside the Id Kah Mosque before the Eid holiday on July 28, 2014 in old Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China. Nearly 100 people have been killed in unrest in the restive Xinjiang Province in the last week in what authorities say is terrorism but advocacy groups claim is a result of a government crackdown to silence opposition to its policies. China's Muslim Uyghur ethnic group faces cultural and religious restrictions by the Chinese government. Beijing says it is investing heavily in the Xinjiang region but Uyghurs are increasingly dissatisfied with the influx of Han Chinese and uneven economic development. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Modern art is truly fascinating. Not in a way that it produces some novel things that will fascinate future generations for decades and even centuries to come. No, that is very far from the truth. On the contrary, modern art is essentially anything (yes, any little thing) that is a bit unusual and was created by a famous person. Let’s take the creation of Antoine Bridier-Nahmias for example. His brainchild is a set of pictures of petri dishes that were contaminated by various cultures of fungi. If this is art, I missed my chance of becoming famous when I accidentally left a piece of bread in a bag in a cupboard for about six months, and didn’t take a picture of the rather shocking results that awaited me when I finally discovered it. (Photo by Antoine Bridier-Nahmias)

David Guttenfelder was born in Iowa and graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology. He has worked for the AP since 1994 based in Kenya, the Ivory Coast, India and Japan. He is currently AP’s chief Asia photographer and his feature work has been used prominently in editorial publications throughout the world including Time and National Geographic. Photo: U.S. soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, fire mortars at known enemy firing positions from a base in the Pech River Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar province, Saturday, October 24, 2009. (Photo by David Guttenfelder/AP Photo)

Summer Zhai and Vicky He, dressed as characters from the anime "Love Live!", rest on stairs during day two of New York Comic Con in Manhattan, New York, October 9, 2015. The event draws thousands of costumed fans, panels of pop culture luminaries and features a sprawling floor of vendors in a space equivalent to more than three football fields at the Jacob Javitz Convention Center on Manhattan's West side. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)