A Blast From The Past: Episode 11

A collection of interesting articles that you may have missed, pulled out from Amusing Planet’s past archives.

The Most Expensive Coffee in The World is Made From Animal Poop

Kopi luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, is made from a certain variety of wild red coffee beans but only after it has passed through the digestive track of the Asian Palm Civet. The berries which grow in Indonesia and Philippines are eaten by the civet, a weasel-like animal, who likes the berries for their flesh. But they can't digest the inner beans which come out as poop.

The Megaliths of Great Britain

A megalithic monument, in archaeology, is a construction involving one or several roughly hewn stone slabs of great size. These monuments are found in various parts of the world, but the best known and most numerous are concentrated in Western Europe, including Brittany, the British Isles, Iberia, South France, South Scandinavia, and North Germany, the highest concentration being at Great Britain. Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales together accounts for hundreds of megalith and stone circle sites. Here is a collection of some of the more popular ones.

Triora - The Town Of Witches

Triora, in Italy, is a sleepy little ancient hill towns in the valley of Argentine in the region of Liguria, close to the French border. Much of the architecture in Triora dates back to the 12th century, but its period of greatest fame was during the 16th century when a number of witch trials were conducted by the Inquisition. The town boasts an excellent museum of witchcraft, and to this day has a powerful association with witches. Some decedents of the original witches can still be seen in the town to this day.

Dalton Ghetti Creates Amazing Sculptures On Tips of Pencils

Dalton Ghetti, an artist from Bridgeport, U.S., has spent a good 25 years of his life working with a razor blade, a sewing needle and a sculpting knife to carve unique miniature sculptures on the graphite of used pencils.

Unusually Long Exposure Photographs by Michael Wesely

For more than a decade, German photography artist Michael Wesely has been inventing and refining techniques for making photographs with unusually long exposures - some as long as three years. In 1997, armed with a self-built pinhole camera, he began using this unique approach to photography to explore major urban construction projects around Berlin.