99 Fun Facts About Abandoned Places

Built to house workers at the nuclear plant that exploded in 1986, which Ukrainian city was evacuated and never resettled?

A city built for the plant died with it. Pripyat, in Kyiv Oblast near the Belarus border, housed the Chernobyl workers and was emptied after the April 1986 explosion, never to be resettled.

Which abandoned Namib Desert diamond-mining town has been reclaimed by the sands?

The desert is moving back in. Kolmanskop, Afrikaans for Coleman's peak, boomed after diamonds were found in 1908, was abandoned in 1956 as reserves ran dry, and the dunes have been filling its houses ever since.

Which industry built up, then emptied, Japan's Hashima Island, 'Battleship Island'?

The mines ran under the sea. Mitsubishi's undersea coal mining, begun in 1887, crowded Hashima to 5,259 people by 1959; when the coal neared depletion in 1974 the mine closed and all residents departed.

Which medieval hill town in Italy's Basilicata region was evacuated from 1963 after landslides, then finished off by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake?

Craco was emptied by the ground itself. Landslides, partly triggered by faulty infrastructure, began its evacuation in 1963, and the 1980 Irpinia earthquake sealed its abandonment, leaving a ghost town on the hill.

Which Pennsylvania town was largely abandoned because of an underground coal-seam fire that has burned since 1962?

Centralia's fire has outlived the town. A coal seam under the borough has burned since 1962; the ground sank, fumes rose, and the population fell from 1,000 in 1980 to five by 2020.

Which European capital is home to the abandoned Spreepark amusement park?

It opened in 1969 in East Berlin and, after reunification, limped on until 2002, when the operator's legal troubles shut it.

Which Philadelphia prison, open from 1829 to 1971, pioneered solitary-confinement rehabilitation in a radial plan copied by 300 prisons?

Solitude was meant to be the cure. Eastern State Penitentiary's 'Pennsylvania system' kept inmates separate to rehabilitate them, and its radial floor plan became the model for over 300 prisons worldwide.

On which island is Varosha, the once-glamorous beach resort fenced off and empty since 1974?

Varosha is on Cyprus, beside Famagusta. Its Greek Cypriot residents fled the Turkish invasion of 1974, and the Turkish army fenced the resort quarter off that August, leaving its hotels empty.

Which mineral was mined at Wittenoom, the contaminated Western Australian ghost town?

Blue asbestos (crocidolite) was mined at Wittenoom until 1966. It was Australia's only blue asbestos mine, left roughly 46,840 hectares contaminated, and the town was formally degazetted in 2007.

Houtouwan, an abandoned fishing village overgrown with vegetation, lies about 64 km east of which city?

Houtouwan sits on Shengshan Island in the Shengsi archipelago, about 64 km east of Shanghai. Its fishing families left for the mainland in the 1990s, and vines have since swallowed the houses.

The saucer-shaped Buzludzha monument, opened in 1981, was built by which country's communist government?

Buzludzha was built by Bulgaria's communist government as a Communist Party memorial house and opened in August 1981 on a Balkan Mountains peak near Kazanlak; it was abandoned after 1989.

Kayakoy, a hillside of stone houses emptied by the 1923 population exchange, is in which country?

The treaty behind the exchange permanently barred its Greek Orthodox residents from returning to their homes.

Which city was purpose-built after 1986 to house Chernobyl plant workers displaced by the disaster?

Slavutych was built from 1986 to 1988 about 50 km east of the plant to house Chernobyl workers and their families, whose old city beside the reactor could never be resettled.

The Ferris wheel in Chernobyl's abandoned amusement park had been scheduled to open officially when?

It never opened, but is now the most photographed object in the dead city.

Which atoll's 167 residents were moved in 1946 to make way for US nuclear tests?

Bikini Atoll's 167 islanders were moved to Rongerik in March 1946 before Operation Crossroads; 23 nuclear tests followed through 1958, and a 1970s return was reversed when residents absorbed caesium-137.

Hashima Island's mine was approved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015 as part of which series?

Hashima was inscribed in 2015 within 'Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution', a 23-site series; South Korea withdrew its objection after Japan agreed to acknowledge wartime forced labour on the island.

Which Aragonese town's Civil War ruins did Franco order left standing beside a rebuilt new town?

Belchite was destroyed in the August–September 1937 battle; Franco ordered the old town left in ruins as a memorial and a new Belchite built alongside, completed in 1954.

In what year did the USPS discontinue Centralia, Pennsylvania's ZIP code after the mine fire emptied it?

The USPS revoked Centralia's ZIP code, 17927, in 2002. Under a 2013 settlement the handful of remaining residents may stay for life, after which their homes pass to the state.

California's ghost town of Bodie is preserved in a state of what?

California keeps Bodie in 'arrested decay': since it became a State Historic Park in 1962, its surviving buildings have been stabilised but never restored, so they look as they did when abandoned.

What became of W. S. Bodey, the prospector after whom Bodie was named?

Bodey found gold there in 1859 but died in a November blizzard that year, before any town rose; a sign painter's spelling of 'Bodie Stables' later fixed the name.

Which Texas port, destroyed by hurricanes in 1875 and 1886, was abandoned rather than rebuilt?

Indianola on Matagorda Bay was a major Gulf port and German immigrant gateway until the hurricanes of 1875 and 1886 flattened it; survivors moved inland and the county seat went to Port Lavaca.

How many inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane were massacred by the Waffen-SS on 10 June 1944?

The Waffen-SS killed 642 villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944, among them 207 children; Charles de Gaulle ordered the ruined village kept as a permanent memorial.

The SS division responsible for the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was which?

The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich carried out the massacre on 10 June 1944: a company of its Der Führer regiment under Adolf Diekmann burned the village as the division moved north toward Normandy.

The fenced-off resort quarter of Famagusta takes its name from a Turkish word meaning what?

Varosha comes from Turkish 'varoş', meaning suburb. Its Greek Cypriot residents fled the 1974 invasion, the army fenced the quarter off, and a stretch of it reopened to visitors only in October 2020.

Which gold-rush ghost town was the first capital of Montana Territory in 1864?

Bannack, site of Montana's first major gold strike in 1862, was the territory's first capital in 1864–65 before the seat moved to Virginia City; it emptied as the gold ran out and became a state park in 1954.

Founded in 1872 when the land was still Peru's, Chile's Humberstone and Santa Laura ghost-town works refined which commodity?

Chile went to war for this stuff. Humberstone and Santa Laura refined saltpeter in the Atacama from 1872, when the area still belonged to Peru, and the abandoned works became a World Heritage Site in 2005.

How tall is Pyongyang's unfinished pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel?

The Ryugyong Hotel rises 330 metres over 105 floors. Construction began in 1987, stalled in 1992, the exterior was finally glazed in 2011, and an LED display was added in 2018.

Work on the Ryugyong Hotel halted in 1992 for what reason?

It stood topped out but windowless for 16 years before the exterior was finished in 2011.

The wreck of the SS Ayrfield in Sydney's Homebush Bay is nicknamed what?

Mangroves sprout from the rusting hull of the SS Ayrfield, a collier towed to Homebush Bay for breaking up in 1972, which earned the wreck the nickname 'the floating forest'.

From 1776, the Venetian island of Poveglia served as what?

Poveglia became a quarantine station under Venice's public health office from 1776, isolating plague ships; it later housed a psychiatric hospital and then a nursing home that closed in 1968.

Which city's future mayor won Italy's 2014 auction for a 99-year lease on Poveglia?

Businessman Luigi Brugnaro bid €513,000 for the lease in May 2014 and became mayor of Venice in 2015, though the state later voided the lease as too low.

The Sanzhi 'UFO houses', pod-shaped resort homes marketed to US military officers before the project collapsed in 1980, stood in which country?

Flying saucers by the sea, built for American officers. The Sanzhi UFO houses in Taiwan resembled Futuro pods, but the resort project collapsed in 1980 and they were demolished between 2008 and 2010.

Which corporation bought Detroit's derelict Michigan Central Station in 2018 for $90 million?

Ford Motor Company bought the derelict 1913 station in 2018 for about $90 million and spent roughly $950 million restoring it, reopening it on 6 June 2024 as the hub of its Corktown campus.

Michigan Central Station closed on January 6, 1988, when which operator relocated its service?

Amtrak moved its Detroit service to a new station nearby, and Michigan Central closed on 6 January 1988 after the last train left; the 1913 building, then the world's tallest rail station, sat derelict for 30 years.

Six Flags New Orleans, abandoned after Hurricane Katrina, first opened in 2000 under what name?

The park opened in May 2000 as Jazzland, was rebranded Six Flags New Orleans in 2003, and flooded under Katrina in August 2005; Six Flags never reopened it, and demolition began in 2024.

Japan's abandoned Nara Dreamland was a near-copy of which American park?

Nara Dreamland opened in 1961 as a copy of Disneyland in Anaheim, complete with a Main Street and a Sleeping Beauty Castle; Tokyo Disneyland's 1983 opening began its decline and it closed in 2006.

Henry Ford founded Fordlândia in the Brazilian Amazon in 1928 to secure a supply of what?

Ford wanted rubber for tyres, but South American leaf blight and worker riots wrecked the plantation; operations shifted downstream to Belterra in 1934 and Ford sold the land back to Brazil in 1945.

The abandoned mining camp of Kennecott, Alaska, once held the world's richest concentration of which metal?

Kennecott's Bonanza mine yielded copper ore of up to 70 per cent purity, the richest known; J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheims formed the Alaska Syndicate to exploit it, and mining ended in 1938.

Built in 1901 by Francis Bannerman, the castle ruin on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River originally served as what?

Francis Bannerman built the castle on Pollepel Island from 1901 as a military surplus arsenal to store stock such as 30 million cartridges bought after the Spanish-American War; a 1920 powder explosion and 1969 fire left it a ruin.

Jamaica's Port Royal, 'the wickedest city on Earth', was destroyed in 1692 by what?

The 7 June 1692 earthquake liquefied the sand spit: two-thirds of Port Royal slid into the harbour and a tsunami followed, killing around 2,000; Kingston was founded as its replacement.

Returning to the Roanoke colony in 1590, Governor John White found the settlers gone and what single word carved into the palisade?

The only clue was one word. CROATOAN, carved into the palisade, led John White to think the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island, but storms forced his ship home before he could check.

After Alcatraz prison closed in 1963, which group occupied the island for 19 months from 1969 to 1971, drawing national attention?

Native American activists calling themselves Indians of All Tribes occupied Alcatraz for 19 months from November 1969 to June 1971, citing treaty rights to surplus federal land.

Cambodia's derelict Bokor Hill Station was built in the 1920s by which colonial power?

France built Bokor Hill Station in 1921-25 as a retreat for colonial officials; around 900 labourers died during construction, and decades later the Khmer Rouge held the hilltop as one of their last strongholds.

Spinalonga, off Crete, housed a colony for sufferers of which disease until 1957?

Spinalonga held Crete's leprosy colony from 1903 until 1957, when the last patients left; islanders nicknamed it 'the island of the living dead', and it later became one of Crete's most visited sites.

Dogpatch USA, an abandoned Arkansas theme park, was based on which comic strip?

Dogpatch USA, opened in 1968, recreated the hillbilly town from Al Capp's Li'l Abner; Capp became a partner and unveiled a statue of town hero Jubilation T. Cornpone on opening day.

Bangkok's Sathorn Unique 'Ghost Tower' was 80% built when work stopped due to what?

Work on Sathorn Unique stopped in the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which left Bangkok with some 300 unfinished high-rises; its sister building by the same architect, the State Tower, was completed in 2001.

Bombay Beach, a California resort turned near-ghost town, sits on the shore of which lake?

Bombay Beach sits on the Salton Sea, which drew crowds rivalling Yosemite's in the 1950s and 1960s before rising salinity and pollution killed off the fish and emptied the shoreline resorts.

Fatehpur Sikri served as the Mughal capital from 1571 to 1585 under which emperor?

Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri to honour the Sufi saint Salim Chishti, who had foretold the birth of his son Jahangir; he left for a Punjab campaign in 1585 and never returned, partly over water shortages.

Teufelsberg, the German hill under a derelict Cold War listening post, is made of what?

Teufelsberg is a mound of wartime rubble: debris from bombed-out Berlin was heaped over an unfinished Nazi military-technical college too sturdy to demolish, and the NSA later built a listening station on top.

Heritage USA, South Carolina's defunct Christian theme park, was built by which couple?

Televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker opened Heritage USA at Fort Mill in 1978; at its 1986 peak it drew nearly 6 million visitors, trailing only the two Disney resorts among US theme parks.

Which notorious patient died in 1938 after decades confined on North Brother Island, NY?

Mary Mallon, 'Typhoid Mary', was an asymptomatic carrier blamed for 51 confirmed typhoid cases; she spent more than two decades quarantined on North Brother Island and died there in November 1938.

Which polar explorer is buried at Grytviken, South Georgia's abandoned whaling station?

Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack aboard the Quest at Grytviken on 5 January 1922, aged 47, at the start of a new expedition; his widow Emily asked that he be buried on South Georgia.

Times Beach, Missouri, was evacuated in 1983 after its road oil proved laced with what?

Russell Bliss sprayed dioxin-laced waste oil on Times Beach's dirt roads for dust control in the early 1970s; the EPA bought out the town in 1983, it was disincorporated in 1985, and Route 66 State Park later covered the site.

What nickname did shortwave listeners give the Soviet Duga radar near Chernobyl?

Shortwave listeners called the Duga 'the Russian Woodpecker' for its 10 Hz tapping; the over-the-horizon radar near Chernobyl, about 150 metres tall, jammed broadcasts worldwide from 1976 to 1989.

One of England's WWII Maunsell sea forts is claimed by which self-declared micronation?

Sealand occupies Roughs Tower, a Maunsell fort off Suffolk; pirate radio operator Paddy Roy Bates seized it in 1967 and declared the Principality of Sealand, complete with constitution, flag and anthem.

Terlingua, a ghost town near Big Bend, grew on mining cinnabar, the ore of which metal?

Cinnabar is mercury ore: Howard Perry's Chisos Mining Company ran Terlingua from Chicago by coded telegram until quicksilver prices fell and the company went bankrupt in 1942; the town later became known for chili cook-offs.

Route 66 ghost town Glenrio, bypassed by I-40 in 1973, straddles which state line?

Fuel was sold on one side to dodge higher gas taxes, while the bar sat on the other because the county next door was dry.

Machu Picchu is thought to have been built around 1450 as an estate for which emperor?

Pachacuti, the ninth Sapa Inca, is credited with building Machu Picchu around 1450 as a royal estate; it was used for about 80 years before being abandoned, possibly after smallpox arrived ahead of the Spanish.

Roughly how many people lived in Kowloon Walled City by 1987, before its demolition?

A 1987 government survey counted about 33,000 residents packed into 2.6 hectares, roughly 1.2 million people per square kilometre; demolition finished in 1994 and Kowloon Walled City Park opened in 1995.

Aghdam, a ruined city of 28,000 dubbed the 'Hiroshima of the Caucasus' after its 1993 emptying, lies in which country?

It sat empty inside a no-go zone for 27 years. Aghdam, the nominal capital of Azerbaijan's Aghdam District, was emptied in 1993 and changed hands again in November 2020.

Ross Island, the abandoned British headquarters of the Andamans, was renamed in 2018 after whom?

Ross Island, the British administrative seat for the Andamans until a 1941 earthquake and the Japanese occupation emptied it, was renamed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep in December 2018.

Dhanushkodi, on India's Pamban Island, was wiped out by a cyclone in which year?

The Rameswaram cyclone of 22–23 December 1964 wiped out Dhanushkodi, sweeping away a passenger train with more than 100 aboard; the town was declared unfit for habitation and its rail link was never rebuilt.

Picher, Oklahoma, dissolved in 2009, was a major centre for mining which two metals?

Picher's lead and zinc mines in the Tri-State district left toxic 'chat' piles and undermined streets, putting it in the Tar Creek Superfund site; a federal buyout and a 2008 tornado finished it off.

Gilman, Colorado, was abandoned in 1984 on whose orders?

The EPA ordered Gilman evacuated in 1984 after groundwater contamination from the Eagle Mine's lead and zinc workings; the site became a Superfund cleanup and the empty town remained private property.

Rhyolite, Nevada's famous Bottle House was built in 1906 from roughly how many bottles?

Tom Kelly built Rhyolite's Bottle House in 1906 from about 50,000 discarded beer and liquor bottles, lumber being scarce in the desert; Paramount's predecessor restored it in 1925 as a set for a silent film.

Calico, California, was bought and restored from 1951 by the founder of which attraction?

Walter Knott, founder of Knott's Berry Farm, bought Calico in 1951 and spent about $700,000 rebuilding it from old photographs before donating it to San Bernardino County in 1966.

Danvers State Hospital is thought to have inspired the Arkham sanatorium in whose fiction?

Lovecraft's Arkham in turn inspired Batman's Arkham Asylum; the Kirkbride building was mostly razed for apartments in 2006.

Which future dictator recuperated at Germany's Beelitz-Heilstätten sanatorium in 1916?

Adolf Hitler recovered at Beelitz-Heilstätten in late 1916 after a leg wound at the Somme; the tuberculosis sanatorium later served as a Soviet military hospital until 1994 and treated Erich Honecker in 1990.

Prora, the 4.5 km Nazi holiday complex on Rügen, was built under which programme?

Prora was the seaside resort of Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude), the Nazi leisure organisation; designed for 20,000 holidaymakers, it never hosted a single vacationer after work stopped in 1939.

Balaklava in Crimea hid a once-classified underground Soviet base, opened as a museum in 2003, for what?

Object 825 GTS at Balaklava sheltered Soviet submarines in a tunnel under Mount Tavros, built to survive a direct nuclear strike; decommissioned in 1993, it opened as a naval museum in 2003.

Cahaba, now a ghost town, was the first permanent capital of which US state?

Cahaba was Alabama's capital from 1820 until flooding at the Alabama–Cahaba confluence drove the legislature to Tuscaloosa in 1826; losing the Dallas County seat to Selma in 1866 emptied it.

Whose headquarters moved into Nicosia International Airport after it closed in 1974?

UN peacekeepers of UNFICYP made the airport their headquarters after it closed in 1974 inside the buffer zone; a Cyprus Airways Trident damaged in the July fighting was left rotting on the apron for decades.

During the Siege of Sarajevo, the derelict 1984 Olympic bobsleigh track was used as what?

Bosnian Serb forces used the Trebević bobsleigh track as an artillery position during the 1992–96 siege, drilling fighting holes into one of the final turns; it later became a graffiti canvas before restoration efforts began in 2014.

Which architect designed Detroit's derelict Packard Automotive Plant, closed in 1958?

Albert Kahn designed the Packard plant from 1903; its Building No. 10 of 1905 was the first US auto factory built of reinforced concrete, and the 3.5-million-square-foot complex outlasted the company by decades.

How tall is the flagpole in Kijong-dong, North Korea's 'Propaganda Village' in the DMZ?

The Kijong-dong flagpole rises 160 metres, built to out-do a 98-metre pole in South Korea's Daeseong-dong across the line; it was the world's tallest flagpole until Azerbaijan's surpassed it in 2010.

Argentina's Villa Epecuén was swamped by a salt lake in 1985; how long was it underwater?

One resident, Pablo Novak, moved back into the ruins when the water receded and lived there alone until his death in 2024.

Which volcano's eruptions from 1995 buried Plymouth, the capital of Montserrat?

Soufrière Hills began erupting in July 1995, and pyroclastic flows buried Plymouth in 1997; the town remained Montserrat's de jure capital while government functions moved to Brades.

Lake Dolores, an abandoned Mojave Desert waterpark, sits beside which highway?

Lake Dolores sits beside Interstate 15 near Newberry Springs, halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas; it reopened as Rock-A-Hoola in 1998 and closed for good in 2004.

Pyramiden, the Soviet coal town on Svalbard closed in 1998, was founded by which country?

Sweden founded Pyramiden in 1910 and sold it to the Soviet Union in 1927; the Arktikugol trust mined coal there until 1998, leaving behind a bust of Lenin, the world's northernmost.

New York's Hart Island, abandoned as a residence since 1977, holds how many burials?

More than one million people lie in Hart Island's potter's field, the largest public cemetery in the US; burials were dug by Rikers Island inmates until the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Parks Department took over.

Eruptions in 1967 and 1969 destroyed British and Chilean bases where in Antarctica?

Deception Island is the flooded caldera of an active volcano; eruptions in 1967 and 1969 wrecked the British and Chilean stations, and a ruined Norwegian whaling station lines its black-sand Whalers Bay.

Vozrozhdeniya Island, site of a Soviet bioweapons laboratory, lay in which water body?

Vozrozhdeniya lay in the Aral Sea; as the sea shrank the island joined the mainland in 2001, exposing the ghost town of Kantubek and the anthrax burial pits of the Aralsk-7 laboratory.

Which US city's subway tunnels, abandoned when work stopped in 1928, never saw a train?

Cincinnati's subway was begun in 1920 and halted in 1928 when the money ran out; about two miles of tunnels survive under Central Parkway, and no track was ever laid.

How many islanders remained on Scotland's St Kilda when it was evacuated in 1930?

The last 36 St Kildans asked to be evacuated after crop failures and an influenza outbreak, and left Hirta on 29 August 1930; the islands passed to the National Trust for Scotland in 1957.

Which steamship burned in 1904, killing 1,021, before beaching on North Brother Island?

The General Slocum caught fire in the East River on 15 June 1904 and was run aground at North Brother Island, but 1,021 died; it remained New York's deadliest disaster until 2001.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville closed in 1961 largely thanks to which antibiotic?

Streptomycin, introduced in the late 1940s, cut tuberculosis admissions so sharply that Waverly Hills was no longer needed and closed in 1961; the building later became a ghost-tour attraction.

What was stolen from the Land of Oz park museum in North Carolina during a 1975 fire?

A 1975 fire gutted the park museum and looters made off with Judy Garland's Dorothy dress and other MGM props; Debbie Reynolds had cut the ribbon in 1970, and the park closed in 1980.

Croatia's derelict Haludovo Palace Hotel was bankrolled by the founder of which magazine?

Penthouse founder Bob Guccione put $45 million into the Haludovo's casino in 1972; the casino went bust within a year, the hotel housed war refugees in the 1990s, and it closed in 2001.

Tskaltubo's crumbling sanatoriums in Georgia have housed refugees from which conflict?

Refugees from the 1992–93 war in Abkhazia were housed in Tskaltubo's Soviet sanatoriums, which had drawn 125,000 visitors a year, among them Stalin, who had a private bathing pool there.

Canfranc station lost its cross-border trains in 1970 when a derailment wrecked what?

France declined to rebuild it, stranding what had opened in 1928 as Europe's second-largest station; it is now a hotel.

Why was New York's ornate City Hall subway station closed in 1945?

The tight curved platform could not be lengthened for ten-car trains, and Brooklyn Bridge station was a short walk away, so City Hall closed on 31 December 1945; 6 trains kept using its loop to turn around.

The last house on Chesapeake Bay's Holland Island, built in 1888, collapsed in which year?

The island's last house, built in 1888, fell into the bay in October 2010 after erosion and subsidence ate away the land; Holland Island once had 360 residents and its own baseball team.

Sewell, Chile's uninhabited 'City of Staircases', housed workers of which mine?

Sewell housed workers of the El Teniente copper mine, the world's largest underground copper mine; built around one central staircase on slopes too steep for cars, it was emptied in the 1970s and UNESCO-listed in 2006.

The liner SS America, renamed American Star, was wrecked in 1994 on which Canary Island?

The American Star broke loose under tow to Thailand, where she was to become a hotel ship, and grounded at Playa de Garcey on Fuerteventura in January 1994; the wreck had all but vanished by the 2010s.

Spain's €1.1 billion Ciudad Real airport, closed in 2012, drew a 2015 bid of how much?

Chinese-backed Tzaneen International bid just €10,000 for the €1.1 billion airport in 2015; the court rejected it as too low, and the airport later earned money storing grounded jets during the pandemic.

Moynaq, Uzbekistan's stranded port, lost its sea mainly to irrigation for which crop?

Soviet canals diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to irrigate cotton, and the sea retreated roughly 150 km from Moynaq; from 2018 its ship graveyard hosted the Stihia electronic music festival.

China's 'Lion City' Shicheng was deliberately flooded in 1959 to form which reservoir?

Shicheng was submerged in 1959 when the Xin'an River was dammed to create Qiandao Lake; around 300,000 people were relocated, and 40 metres down the Ming and Qing stonework is shielded from wind and rain.

Alberto Burri entombed the ruins of old Gibellina, Sicily, under a vast 'Cretto' of what?

Burri poured white concrete over the rubble of old Gibellina, levelled by the 1968 Belice earthquake, keeping the street plan as walkable channels; begun in 1985, the Cretto was finished only in 2015.

A 1971 accident at the Soviet bioweapons lab on Vozrozhdeniya Island spread which disease?

Weaponised smallpox released in a 1971 open-air test infected ten people in Aralsk, three of whom died; the lab's town of Kantubek was evacuated in 1992 and left to rot.