Week 1: something I always wanted to know

What’s the weirdest place in the world and why?

One of the weirdest places in the world which I found is a tiny island off the coast of Japan, okunoshima. It is inhabited almost entirely by rabbits, and has become a popular tourist attraction because of it. The legend behind this surplus of rabbits is even more intriguing. During World War II, when chemical weapons were being created by both sides of the war, the Japanese had used the island to test the chemicals on the rabbits. A common theory is that the rabbits on the island are the descendants of those chemically changed rabbits. Experts, however, see this theory as nothing more than a myth. American soldiers had euthanized every rabbit who had been tested soon after the war reached an end, and it is more likely the rabbits come from a careless tourist who set one free and now, decades later, the island has hundreds roaming the streets. Another interesting place I found was the Nazca Lines of Peru. These lines are long, geometric figures and animal figures which go up to 200 meters. It is one of South America’s unexplained mysteries. The lines are on salt flats, and from the aerial view the shapes they form are so perfect that a common theory is that they could only be of alien origin. Even more intriguing is the fact that they are all drawn in a single line, which seems to be beyond the technology of the time. Finally, the last interesting place I found was the Red Beach in Panjin, China. This beach is converted into a special kind of seaweed which turns bright red in autumn. It is an important part of its environment as a type of migrating bird which settles there uses the red seaweed as a place for their nest. The seaweed is called sueda, and it is unique to its area in China and is found almost nowhere else in the world.