Barra Airport

Barra Airport is one of the world's most spectacular and beautiful airports, located on the hebridean island of Barra , Scotland. The airport is actually a beach, in fact, it's the only airport in the world where scheduled flights take-off and land on a beach. That is, provided the airport's three runways are not submerged at high-tide. This wide shallow bay of Traigh Mhor, near Barra's northern tip, was once famous primarily for its cockles until aircraft started to use the beach on 14 June 1933. Scheduled air services to and from Barra Airport began on 7 August 1936.The beach is set out with three runways, marked by wooden poles at their ends. This allows the Twin Otters that serve the airport to almost always land into the wind. At high tide these runways are under the sea and flight times has to be regularly rescheduled with the tide. If emergency night landing is required vehicle lights are used to illuminate the runway and reflective strips laid on to the beach.Surprisingly, the Barra beach is also open to the public. In fact, it’s a very popular spot for cockle picking. Visitors to the beach can tell if the airport is operating by checking to see if the windsock is flying.Although flying into or out of Barra sounds like a great adventure, the airport is subject to the same safety rules as anywhere else. Facilities include modern emergency services, though the airport fire crews are called out far more frequently to help stranded dolphins or seals on Traigh Mhor than for any reason connected with the aircraft operations.

Under Sea Shiva Temple

Nishkalank Mahadev Temple in Koliyak, Bhavnagar, Gujarat (India) is full of wonders and awe. This temple is buried inside the sea. On a heavy tide day, all that can be seen are the flag and a pillar. It is beyond ones comprehension that there is a Lord Shiva Temple just under the fierce sea. This temple is still in use, and people reach out to Lord Shiva’s temple about 1.5 kilometers into the sea on foot!.  Nishkalank’ has many meanings - they are clean, pure, guiltless, to cleanse, to purify, etc.  The temple has 5 distinct swayumbu Shiva lingams inside. Each lingam has a Nandhi facing it. The lingams are spread across a square platform. There is a pond called Pandavas pond, where devotees first wash their hands and legs and only then they visit the shrines.One can visit this temple only two times in 24 hours.This is definitely one of the best spiritual destinations!

Pitohui poisonous bird

 They're not just for snakes and spiders! Some birds also poisonous. While no bird currently known to science wields a venomous bite. But It is, in fact, the only known genus of poisonous bird in the world. The Pitohui  is one of New Guinea's most widely spread birds. Undoubtedly, there are other bird species that have chemical self-defense mechanisms to prevent predators from eating them, but to date, this is the only bird found to actually be poisonous to humans. At least three species of pitohui have a strong poison in their skin and feathers, the Hooded and Variable Pitohui being the deadliest of the three. Pitohuis are generally about 23 centimetres long with strong legs and a powerful beak. They are brightly feathered in red and black warning colors, much the same as the frogs. The Hooded appears to be the most dangerous, with the Variable being of medium toxicity and the Brown Pitohui the least harmful.  The Hooded Pitohui is brightly colored, with a brick red belly and a jet black head. The Variable Pitohui, as its name implies, exists in many different forms, and twenty subspecies with different plumage patterns have been named. Two of them, however, closely resemble the Hooded Pitohui.Jack Dumbacher, researcher at the California Academy of Sciences, discusses his 1980s discovery of New Guinea's Hooded Pitohui, the first poisonous bird to be documented by science.

Some of the best discoveries in science are completely serendipitous. Dr. Dumbacher discovered, quite by accident, that a common Papua New Guinea bird uses potent poisons for protection. A defense never before documented in birds. And that's just the beginning of the story.