1947 - THE ROSWELL BASE PHOTOGRAPHERS:

1947 - THE ROSWELL BASE PHOTOGRAPHERS: 

THEIR CRASH SECRETS REVEALED

Roswell Army Air Field base photographers who were stationed there at the time of the UFO crash over six decades ago have recently been located and contacted. In their 20s at the time, today they are in their mid and late 80s. And today they offer intriguing details about what they maintain was indeed a very strange day in early July of 1947. They vividly remember it- and the stories that they tell are internally consistent and they are corroborated by others.

It has now been learned that:

Oddly, the base Photo Unit was completely “cut out” of photographing or filming the fallen “balloon“ that was “mistaken” as a flying disc. They state that that though they had photographed all types of balloons and experimental craft (including their retrievals) many times before, they never received orders to photograph or process images of the Roswell crash debris at any point.

It now appears evident that Base Commander Butch Blanchard and his superiors agreed that it was best to have outsiders who were located off-base take on the task of photographing and filming the wreckage and corpses. This vital task needed to be compartmentalized. It was a security risk to have too many involved, examining the material and corpses close-up, all stationed together at the same base at the same time. It was deemed wiser to use those from other bases or nearby retired military with Top Secret clearance.

Incredibly, the Commander of the Photo Unit was relieved of his duties by Special Order and transferred out of Roswell to a base in California almost immediately after the military had discovered the crash. This was at the very same time that the Roswell Base Chaplain was also relieved of his duties and shipped to a far west location, as reported in a previous article.

                       

“Men from DC” were flown into the base following the discovery of the crash. It is believed that they were brought in to photograph the dead corpses and debris. One of these DC photographers has confessed his involvement in photographing the crash aftermath. And he too was transferred out from where he was stationed after his crash site involvement.

The base photographers interviewed never believed that the crash was resultant from any kind of balloon crash but rather that there was a hush-up.

A civilian is identified who held Top Secret military clearance and photographed the bodies nearly immediately after they were discovered. Within three hours the DC photo crew had arrived to take over the task.

THE 3^RD PHOTO UNIT SPEAKS

The 3^RD Photo Unit at Roswell had personnel that held Top Secret clearances. This is because, they explain, they often had to photograph and process images of experimental craft and weapons (and their crashes) and many other types of highly classified projects and technologies. If the crash was in fact the downing of a Mogul balloon (as the Air Force now maintains) photo unit personnel possessing Top Secret clearance would have been deployed.

Two of the base photographers and the wife of a third (still living and lucid but unable to speak due to a recent stroke) have recently offered up insight on the crash incident for the very time:

James Remiyac

PFC 3^rd Photo Unit

Jim Remiyac was a 20 year old PFC in the 3^rd Photo Unit at Roswell in July of 1947. Now 85, he has recently suffered a stroke but I had the opportunity to talk with his wife about his time there.

She and her husband discussed the crash incident over the decades, including well before all of the books, magazine and shows on Roswell.

She explained that her husband said that he and his unit were “shut out from everything” and that “even though they should have been there as they were many times before for similar things, they were not called out. And they wondered about this after the newspaper accounts too. Why? What was so special?”

Remiyac noticed increased flight activity in and out of the base and he had heard rumors that people from Washington, DC were there for a serious matter. He called them “brass.”

He never believed it was a balloon- and he does believe that there was a cover-up. He also does not discount that the crash could have been extraterrestrial in nature- but he had no first-hand knowledge of that. He explained that everyone got quite about it until they got out. “Beginning in the early 1950s we would again mention it to one another.” 

Gene Niederschmidt

PFC 3^rd Photo Unit

Gene Niedershmidt, pictured above, was also a Unit member and who possessed Top Secret clearance. Gene echoes Remiyac’s recollections. Remiyac and Niederschmidt had discussed the incident for decades and kept in touch. Mrs. Remiyac provided me with Gene’s contact information.

Though they were brought in to photograph and document “any and all kinds or crashes” Gene remembers that no one was called from his unit to do so when it came to that specific crash that particular time in July. Gene remains uncomfortable to this day about why this is so:

If it were a highly classified project of any type that had fallen, quick response and visual documentation would be required by base operations policy.

If it were a weather balloon, they photographed many of those as well. Any airborne device that comes to grief near or over the base was to be filmed.

Asked if this was a rather mundane thing to do, Gene explained that they even took pictures of servicemen after they had been in Friday fights, or of the crashed jeep of a drunken soldier, and similar “events.”

Gene and I agreed that someone from somewhere photographed and filmed the fallen debris no matter what its origin. The DC folks that were discussed may well have played that part.

Gene recommended that I contact Calvin Cox, his PFC companion who he said could confirm all of this and that he had another story to tell about that day.

Calvin Cox

PFC 3^rd Photo Unit

For Calvin Cox, that early July in 1947 was especially eventful. Readers will remember a prior piece in which it was related that it was Calvin Cox who was enlisted by Major Edwin Easley to help guard the Hangar at Roswell containing the debris  and who had orders to “shoot to kill” anyone who was unauthorized.

Calvin confirms Gene and Jim’s accounts that there was a “blackout” of information and a “shut out” of participation.

And like Gene and Jim, he also recalls unfamiliar faces around the base and his activity areas in the time immediately following the crash. He noted that some of these base visitors were thought to be from the FBI in DC.

Earlier corroboration of these three accounts comes from a brief interview that was conducted with the Unit’s Operations Manager, Vernon Zorn. In 1991’s UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Don Schmidt, Zorn confirmed that “no photos of the crash site were taken by his men.”

COMMANDER OF PHOTO UNIT ORDERED OUT OF ROSWELL

1^st Lt. Lewis Cain Bohanon commanded the 3^rd Photo Unit at Roswell which took picture in the field and processed highly classified photos in the Lab.  

Very interestingly, by an issued Special Order (#139) Bohanon was relieved of his duties at Roswell on July 18^th, 1947, less than two weeks after the military discovered the crash. The decision by his superiors to relieve him was likely made several days earlier. Bohanon was transferred out to Hamilton Field in California, and was replaced by an outsider, Lt. Harold W. Arner.

It is worthy to note that Reverend Elijah H. Hankerson, the Roswell Base Chaplain (whose strange story is reported in my article online and in Witness to Roswell 2^nd Edition) was also relieved of his duties days after the crash.  Like Bohanon, he too was suddenly replaced by an outsider.
Bohanon was reached by author William Moore when researching his 1980 book The Roswell Incident. Though he did not speak of his sudden base transfer, on page 196 of the book, Moore briefly states: “Lt. Lewis Bohanon insisted that no photographic record remained documenting the incident.”
Perhaps Bohanon became aware of the use of the ‘outsiders’ to image the crash incident. Roswell Base Commander Blanchard may have had to have told Bohanon not to go out to the site, just as Roswell’s Fire Department was told by the military not to do so.  Or perhaps Bohanon had actively coordinated and collaborated with these outsiders.
Whatever the reason for his post-crash transfer, Bohanon knew too much and it was deemed necessary to ship him out.
He was obviously compliant, and was afterwards rewarded with a promotion to the rank of Major.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: THE PHOTOGRAPHERS NAMED

With decay of the creatures a concern, photographing and filming creatures had to be of immediate importance. There would have been field photographs taken. But stirring up the base’s photo unit was not wanted; the task had to be done on the down-low. A nearby photo studio owner was tapped to this task.
A civilian who ran a successful Roswell photo studio also functioned as an occasional contract photographer to the base. As a veteran who still retained his Top Secret clearance, he photographed many sensitive military things. This man’s name was Jack Rodden Sr.

Jack Rodden

According to Tom Carey and Don Schmidt (as reported in their book Witness to Roswell) Mary Rodden, (Jack Rodden Sr.’s daughter-in-law, a Nursing Manager at New Mexico Rehabilitation Center in Roswell) said that he had told her that he had taken pictures of the crash debris and the bodies and that he had been sworn to secrecy. 

He also cryptically and sparingly indicated to his namesake son, Jack Rodden Jr., that “they killed it” when speaking of one of the photographed creatures. Though they have yet to be found, Rodden Sr. told his son that had “hidden records about it.”

Jack Rodden Sr. also told family a ‘side story’ on the incident: A rancher had said that his three children had come home at the time of the crash frightened by the military because they got too close to the site.  

Confirming the testimony of the three photo unit vets that told me that “men from DC” were flown in to Roswell after the crash is the testimony of one of the DC photographers himself:

FREDERICK BENTHAL

Frederick Benthal was a Sergeant and Army Air Force Photographer in Washington, DC in the summer of 1947.  Benthal was interviewed for inclusion in Stanton Friedman’s 1994 Crash at Corona. Referred to only as “FB” in Friedman’s book, Carey and Schmidt some time later had examined the case and determined that “FB” was “Fred Benthal.”

Benthal explained that he and Col. Al Kirkpatrick were under sudden orders to fly to the Roswell base, a three hour flight. There they were taken north of Roswell where they had observed covered trucks carrying some type of wreckage. Further on they were taken to a desert site with a tent. This is where he and others took photographs of small humanoid bodies temporarily stored in the tent on tarps. They had large heads, darkish complexion and very thinly constructed bodies. He also detected a strange odor within the tent.

Benthal said that his picture-taking was sharply supervised by an officer who did not want Benthal to make sustained observation of the creatures. He stated that all of his photographs and equipment were then confiscated and he and his Colonel companion were debriefed that they were to say nothing of this as a matter of national security and then were flown back to DC. 

And just like Col. Lewis Bohanon (who commanded the 3^rd Photo Unit at Roswell) was transferred out of the base after the crash, Frederick Benthal reported that after the crash incident, he too was “transferred out.” 

Someone really didn’t want Fred talking. He was reassigned to Antarctica “to study the effects of cold on pieces of equipment.”

Strange Things in the Sky to This Day!

Strange Things in the Sky to This Day!

 

Human beings have always seen unidentified objects in the sky. From the prophet Ezekiel’s sighting of a flying wheel in 593 B.C., to the 1561 A.D. Battle over Nuremberg, Germany, to Kenneth Arnold’s “pie plate” UFOs spotted near Mt. Rainer, Washington, in June 1947, there are things above our heads that baffle us.

Many of these unidentified flying objects appear to be intelligently controlled aircraft. Others, like the following sightings in California and Illinois, defy explanation.

San Marcos, California

Wade stopped at the beach in Del Mar, California, on his way home from San Diego to San Marcos, on a lazy summer afternoon. He spent the rest of that June day surf fishing and arrived home after dark, around 9 p.m. “I relaxed, had a beer or two and went to my covered drive to clean my catch,” Wade said. “I completed that task and looked to the north at the rocky mountainside in the near distance.”
He didn’t expect to see what was there. “Above my neighbor’s homes across the street something was shimmering and moving rapidly side to side in a space of maybe 60 feet at 20 feet altitude,” Wade said. “I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me from the time earlier in the day when I spent time on the beach in the bright afternoon sun. I was wrong.”
Two shimmering, nearly transparent parallel lines about three-feet wide in the air moved silently and quickly side to side in the faint glow of a streetlight. “It was just wings and eyes,” he said. “The wings didn’t flap like a birds, it was more like a dragonfly, but dragonflies don’t grow three-foot wingspans, fly at night, or display what seemed to be some kind of intelligence like this thing did.”

The entity’s side-to-side movements encompassed about 60 feet in what Wade estimated was only a few seconds. Wade said the entity seemed to know he had seen it and it stopped in the air. “Whatever it was, it halted its side-to-side movement and seemed to focus on me,” he said.
Fear gripped Wade and he felt his hair rise from his scalp to his ankles. “I was sure it was a real thing, then I noticed the thing had big black eyes,” he said. “They weren’t friendly eyes at all.”
The entity quickly shot across the street toward Wade. He dropped to the pavement and it swooped over his head. “The thing was interested in me,” Wade said. “It was staring me down when it was across the street and either attacked or was trying to intimidate me, or who knows what, when it came at me.”

Robotic Dragonfly – Original artwork by Skeletox

Wade moved from under the covered part of his drive to get a better look at the swooping thing. It was directly above his head. “I felt great fear,” Wade said. “I said to the thing out loud,’ I see you.’”
It moved again.
“It zipped back into view from the direction it had gone, and was looking directly down at me with the weird unblinking eyes,” he said. “It realized I was looking right at it, and it took off in a flash. It’s gone. For good, I hope.”

Oak Brook, Illinois

Cool air poured through the open windows of the car as Lisa Becker and her husband pulled through their suburban Chicago neighborhood of Oak Brook one night in 1996. Nature painted the dusk pink, orange and red, but something dark suddenly smeared the canvas. “As we approached our subdivision, we saw a large blackness in the air,” Becker said. “It was about eight feet in diameter, about 100 feet away from us, and about 30 feet in the air. It was moving in a straight line.”

Her husband also saw this black shadow. “It had no specific shape and its edges undulated,” she said. “As it flew closer we pulled over to watch it. It was so low that you could have hit it with a rock.”
When they noticed the object, the Beckers later named the “pterodactyl,” it slowly and noiselessly crept through the sky from east to west about 50 yards from the back of their house. “It moved in a perfectly straight line as if it were on a tightrope,” she said.
The couple watched the object as it sailed about 10 feet past them, 30 feet in the air, and folded in upon itself, and disappeared. “It was not a vehicle,” Becker said. “The best way to describe it would be to say it looked like a very large flat stingray (with) no tail. It moved in a perfectly straight line, and never varied from its path.”

This left the college-educated Beckers wondering what they saw. “My husband thought it was strange, but didn’t have any particular emotional response to the thing,” Becker said. “It didn’t seem to have any sort of depth to it. It was like looking into a very dark spot that could have blotted out anything behind it. It didn’t have any wind or exhaust in its trail. Our best thought, though entirely illogical, was that it was a rip in the space-time continuum.”
Whatever the black, undulating “pterodactyl” was flying over their house, the memory has stayed with the Beckers for years. “I asked myself at the time, ‘how did the object make me feel?’” she said. “It wasn’t pleasant, maybe even slightly menacing. Not that it was menacing me. It creeped me out a little that it clearly came from the direction of my back yard. So it easily could have crossed over my house.”
The couple hasn’t seen anything like the object since. “My husband and I were amazed. We’re just regular people who saw something strange one day and still can’t reconcile that thing with our logical minds,” Becker said. “This stuff is sort of like UFOs in that there is no one you can talk to or no one to report it to. At least with UFOs there is MUFON. Ever since then I’ve been wondering if anyone else has ever seen something like it.”

Your Burning Questions About The Roswell Incident, Answered!!!!!!

The Popular Science archive answers those nagging questions about the July 1947 UFO crash in the desert outside of Roswell, N.M.

Anthropomorphic test dummies U.S. Air Force

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the UFO incident near Roswell, N.M., that happened 66 years ago yesterday. On June 24, 1997, the U.S. Air Force released a 231-page report called “Case Closed: Final Report on the Roswell Crash." Officials claimed that the aliens seen by witnesses were actually anthropomorphic test dummies dropped from high-altitude research balloons. In the September 1997 issue of Popular Science, editor Dawn Stover addressed the questions still lingering after the government declared "case closed."
What are we to believe about the "Roswell Incident," the alleged crash in July 1947 of an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico? The Air Force's recent report contends that "aliens" were human-like dummies dropped during high-altitude balloon tests. True believers counter with photos of a "fragment" from an alien spacecraft. Below are answers to frequently asked questions.

Q: How could anyone mistake a dummy for an alien?

A: Firsthand witnesses saw the dummies at a distance. The physical appearance of the dummies and the type of vehicles used to recover them match the accounts of some witnesses.

Q: The dummy drops didn't begin until 1954, so how does that explain what witnesses saw in 1947?

A: The Air Force says debris from a secret experiment to eavesdrop on Soviet nuclear tests landed near Roswell. Somehow that 1947 event and others in the 1950s—including dummy drops and accidents involving humans—became "consolidated" in the minds of local observers, according to the Air Force.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M.: Click here to see this photo in the Popular Science archive.  John B. Carnett

Q: What about the nurse who saw alien autopsies at the Roswell base hospital?

A: Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, has said that he was at the hospital on July 7, 1947. He saw Naomi Maria Selff, a nurse, run from a room with a cloth over her mouth. Selff told him that she had walked in on the autopsy of three mangled black little bodies; the odor was so horrible that the autopsies were moved elsewhere on the base.
The Air Force says that Dennis may be remembering a nurse named Eileen Mae Fanton, who matches his physical description of Selff and was one of five nurses assigned to the Roswell hospital in 1947. The Air Force adds that Dennis may have confused his memories of Selff/Fanton with a 1956 aircraft accident that killed 11 crewmen. The badly burned remains were brought to the Roswell base hospital. The odor was so bad that the remains were moved to a refrigerated room at the base commissary. Three bodies were autopsied at Ballard.

Q: Didn't the material seen at the 1947 debris site have unusual properties? What about the new fragment?

A: Some witnesses recall thin metallic material that would not burn and, when crumpled, returned to its original shape. The Air Force says these accounts are consistent with polyethylene balloons laminated with aluminum, used in experiments launched from Holloman Air Force Base west of Roswell. These balloons were not flown before May 1948, however.
The inch-wide "fragment" unveiled two months ago "should be considered extraterrestrial in origin," says health and safety technician Russell VernonClark of the University of California at San Diego. He tested a half-milligram sample, and says it is 99 percent silicon, with an isotopic ratio that does not naturally occur in silicone found on Earth; his work has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.—Dawn Stover

Roswell map: Click here to see this map in the Popular Science archive.  Popular Science archives

Mysterious Lights and Sounds in High Mountain, NJ

SATURDAY, July 06, 2013

Mysterious Lights and Sounds in High Mountain, NJ

I came across the following odd newspaper article from 1885 that describes weird lights & sounds occurring in, what is currently, the High Mountain Park, NJ area (near Wayne, NJ):

The Bucks County Gazette, Bristol, Pennsylvania - 30 April 1885

Uncanny Sounds Heard and Mysterious Lights Seen by the Valley Residents

Superstitious residents of the regions known as Preakness, Haledon, and other suburbs hemmed in by the lofty hills known as High mountain, writes a Patterson, N.J., correspondent to the New York World, place extra bolts on their doors now o’ nights are are careful to be indoors “after hours.” Numbers of superstitious ones, and some who are not superstitious by any means, are willing to make affidavits that they have heard uncanny sounds proceeding from the heights, and nearly every body in the vicinity who has been near the foot of the mountain after dark will vouch for the statement that mysterious lights have been seen flitting to and fro up among the trees.

No soul lives there, and, as it is said that several murders have been perpetrated there, the villages state, with a solemn shake of the head, that “the devil is at work and no mistake,” and that there are “spooks on High mountain.”

A party of the braver and brawnier lads of the bailiwick endeavored to solve the mystery a few nights ago, but they soon returned with white faces and quaking limbs, and informed those in waiting by the stove of the place of rendezvous that it was all well enough for them to be sittin’ there toastin’ their shins and joken’, but if they wanted to find out anything about the spooks they had better make the trip themselves. Upon being mollified with “something hot,” they became more communicative, and related to their open-mouthed audience the following hair-curdling tale:

They said they had climbed to the top of the mountain, where the lights had been seen, when all at once they were surrounded by lights that jumped around them and climbed the trees and performed other acrobatic feats. Although they appeared to be right in the midst of the flames not a hair on their head was injured and their clothing wasn’t even singed. They smelled phosphorous just as plain as it could be smelled, and while they were wondering what to do next the wind whistled through the trees, producing such unearthly sounds that they came right straight away and let the wind have it all to itself.

Doubting Thomases in the audience plucked up courage and firearms enough to make the trip themselves and they, too, soon returned, looking as pale as the historical ghosts and shaking like rattle-boxes. Nobody showed a disposition to go home, and finally, when the host informed them that it was time to close up, they started off in a group and spent the night together by a hospitable neighbor’s fire rather than pass the mountain until daylight did appear.

Since then the phenomena have been witnessed by scores of those who were brave enough to approach within sight of the bleak and densely wooded mountain, and the matter has been the chief topic of conversation in the country stores, in the taverns, in the village schools, and has even been refereed to by the local dominies. The town hodlums are now free of going to the stores after dark, for their parents would not think of sending them where they would not go themselves. The jolly hosts of the roadside taverns are jolly no longer, or must be content to be jolly by themselves, for the loungers now lounge at home.

Old residents say that the same thing occurred just before the last cholera epidemic, and that the light presaged another visitation of that dread scourge. Scores of old timers are willing to wager on this, and prominent citizens are willing to encourage them in their belief, for it is on record that the same thing did occur in 1836, just before death stalked through this section of the country.

Reports from Pike county, Pennsylvania, say that the same phenomena have appeared there just as they did in 1836, and that the citizen of that place spend most of their night-times in their homes.

Citizens who pretend to be wise assert that the Pike county phenomena are caused by the escape of coal gas from the mountains, and that it is really no phenomenon at all, but is the result of natural causes. They also say that the mysterious lights on High mountin can be traced to the same cause, and are apparently honest in their belief that a vein of coal would be found by anybody taking the trouble to hunt for it. Â Should this prove true there is wealth in store for the gentlemen who own High mountain, but they will have to seek foreign aid to unearth it , for no native will go within gunshot distance of it since the experiences above related.

HOMES & EARTHLY BUILDINGS INSPIRED BY UFO'S

We have collected some earthly buildings that are shaped like UFO by inspiration.

The Flying Saucer House - Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA

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This home was built by the late Curtis W. King in 1970, around the time the original Star Trek series ended. It sits on a road leading to Chattanooga's Signal Mountain and features a retractable staircase, like any good UFO should. The three-bedroom, two-bath house was sold in 2008 for $130,900, after Cleveland, Tennessee's Crye-Leike Auctions posted it for sale on eBay. [link]

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The Circus - Astana, Kazakhstan

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In the late 2005 Astana was the landing site of a UFO in the shape of a huge “flying saucer”. But soon it became clear that it was not a visit of an extraterrestrial civilization but the new capital circus. Thanks to its space-like architecture the building stands out against the urban background. The building is adjoined by the hotel complex, the administration premises, the arena, pens and other circus related building.

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The circus can seat 2,000 spectators. In the center there is a classic 13-m arena, which is equipped with modern machinery for the different acts: flights, ice shows, arena, etc. [link]

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Sanzhi UFO houses - New Taipei City, Taiwan

The Sanzhi UFO houses, also known as the Sanzhi pod houses or Sanzhi Pod City, were a set of abandoned pod-shaped buildings in Sanzhi District, New Taipei City, Taiwan.

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The UFO houses were constructed beginning in 1978. They were intended as a vacation resort in a part of the northern coast adjacent to Tamsui, and were marketed towards U.S. military officers coming from their East Asian postings. However, the project was abandoned in 1980 due to investment losses and several car accident deaths during construction, which is said to have been caused by the unfortuitous act of bisecting the Chinese dragon sculpture located near the resort gates for widening the road to the buildings. Other stories indicated that the site was the former burial ground for Dutch soldiers.

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The pod-like buildings became a minor tourist attraction due in part to their unusual architecture. The structures have since been subject of a film, used as a location by MTV for cinematography, photographed by people, and become a subject in online discussions, described as a ghost town or "ruins of the future"

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As of 2010, all UFO houses have been demolished and the site is in the process of being converted to a commercial seaside resort and water-park. [link]

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Pensacola Beach’s Spaceship House – Florida, USA

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The so-called Spaceship House is currently the Pensacola Beach Preservation and Historical Society’s headquarters. Having survived Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Dennis with nary a scratch, the southern Florida Futuro house sits atop a more traditional blockhouse structure with a permanent ramp to ground level. [link]

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Universum Science Center - Bremen, Germany

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The Universum Bremen opened in September 2000 near to the University of Bremen, Germany. Covering over 4,000 m² the exhibition contains exhibits related to one of the three topics: mankind, earth and the cosmos. The science center building, with its 40,000 stainless steel scales, resembles a mixture between a whale and mussel. It was designed by the Bremen architect Thomas Klumpp. [link]

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Chemosphere House - Los Angeles, California, USA

The Chemosphere, designed by American architect John Lautner in 1960, is an innovative Modernist octagon house in Los Angeles, California.

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The building stands on the San Fernando Valley side of the Hollywood Hills, just off of Mulholland Drive. It is a one story octagon with around 2200 square feet (200m2) of living space. Most distinctively, the house is perched atop a 5-foot-wide concrete pole nearly thirty feet high. This innovative design was Lautner's solution to a site that, with a slope of 45 degrees, was thought to be practically unbuildable. Because of a concrete pedestal, almost 20 feet (6.1 m) in diameter, buried under the earth and supporting the post, the house has survived earthquakes and heavy rains. The house is reached by a funicular. Chemosphere is bisected by a central, exposed brick wall with a fireplace, abutted by subdued seating, in the middle. [link]

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The Buzludzha Monument – Bulgaria

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Buzludzha (Turkish: Buzluca - lit. meaning "glacially/icy") is a historical peak in the Central Stara Planina, Bulgaria and is 1441 metres high. In 1868 it was the place of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels led by Hadji Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and the Turks.

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Niterói Contemporary Art Museum - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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This flying saucer building was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with the assistance of structural engineer Bruno Contarini. It is 16 meters high and the cupola has a diameter of 50 meters. It is set on a cliff, with offering views of Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, and Sugarloaf Mountain. Completed in 1996, the modernist structure is one of the city’s main landmarks. [link]

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