8 Forgotten Giants

Lighthouse hidden in the sand

Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse in Jutland Denmark started life on December 27, 1900 (construction started in 1899).

The lighthouse is on the top of Lønstrup Klint (cliff), 60 metres above sea level. Until 1908 it operated on gas which it produced from a gasworks on the site.
It ceased to operate on August 1, 1968.

The lighthouse was consumed by the moving sandmasses of a gigantic dune during the last 15 years. Up to the late 90s the lighthouse was a working one with a museum and a tea house attached. Nowadays there is only a ruin left of the once nice and impressive lighthouse.
Shifting sands and coastal erosion led to the buildings being abandoned in 2002.

The “American Star”

 One of the most remarkable shipwrecks on record, the S.S. America was beached off the coast of the Canary Islands, after a storm broke the towlines from a tugboat dragging the ship near the coast of Morocco. After it beached, the America’s hull split in two, and the stern section eventually sank. An interesting note: locals from the Canary Island of Fuerteventura have ransacked the ship, and much of their home furnishings, etc. are former pieces of the great merchant liner. The bow of the S.S. America (actually called the American Star at the time of its demise) still remains beached about a mile from shore.

The church which stood over a sea of lava

On February 20, 1943, a volcano suddenly rose from the ground at the Mexican state of Michoacan, and buried two villages in lava and ashes. Today, 64 years after the eruption, the only trace of the villages is the church tower of San Juan Parangaricutiro, a little building which stood above a sea of rugged lava.


The church of San Juan is now a ghostly and abandoned ruin in the middle of nowhere. During the eruption, the lava flowed around and into the church, and covered 3/4 of the town. Just beneath the church, the old houses and buildings keep buried under the rocks.

 Construction Crane Buried in Ice Sheet

In the mid 1960s, ITT built a power transmission line in Antarctica. The transmission towers stood 115 feet tall.
As you can see in this photo, all but the top 40 feet of the towers are now buried in ice, and the crane used to build the towers will soon be totally covered by ice
Not only are the power transmission towers being buried, so are the Antarctic research stations themselves.
The old Byrd Station has been shut down because it is buried beneath 40 to 50 feet of ice and snow and is slowly being crushed.

The incomplete Ryugyong Hotel.

If Dr. Evil was a real person, he would need a real hideout, and that real hideout may very well be The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea.


The giant dark monolith , has 105 floors, yet it is completely empty without a single window.

This is the striking (and huge) Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. It’s a 330-metre-tall pyramid-shaped building with 3,000 rooms, and was supposed to have 7 revolving restaurants, except they never actually finished it. 



Newspapers estimated the cost of construction was $750 million - 2% of North Korea’s GDP - and it is generally assumed construction came to a halt in 1992 due to lack of funding, acute electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine.

The building itself is complete, however it has no windows, fixtures or fittings - which makes it officially the world’s Tallest Unoccupied Building! In fact, it’s the tallest building by far in North Korea, the 18th tallest building in the entire world, and if it were ever to be completed, would be the world’s tallest hotel.


The Ryugyong Hotel appears in the game
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, where a wanted North Korean official has turned it into a fortress. The building is destroyed with a bunker buster bomb.

Update: After 16 years Ryugyong Hotel is starting to get back to life. Egypt’s Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the tower. The company has put glass panels into the concrete shell and installed telecommunications antennas. South Korean estimations say that it would cost $2 billion to finish the hotel and make it safe, that is the same as 10% annual GDP of North Korea.

Maunsell Army Sea Forts

The Thames Estuary Army Forts were constructed in 1942 to a design by Guy Maunsell, following the successful construction and deployment of the Naval Sea Forts. Their purpose was to provide anti-aircraft fire within the Thames Estuary area. Each fort consisted of a group of seven towers with a walkway connecting them all to the central control tower. The fort, when viewed as a whole, comprised one Bofors tower, a control tower, four gun towers and a searchlight tower. They were arranged in a very specific way, with the control tower at the centre, the Bofors and gun towers arranged in a semi-circular fashion around it and the searchlight tower positioned further away, but still linked directly to the control tower via a walkway. All the forts followed this plan and, in order of grounding, were called the Nore Army Fort, the Red Sands Army Fort and finally the Shivering Sands Army Fort. All three forts were in place by late 1943, but Nore is no longer standing. Construction of the towers was relatively quick, and they were easily floated out to sea and grounded in water no more than 30m (100ft) deep



This forts saw action during the Second World War, and there is no doubt that they proved their worth. So much so in fact that anti-aircraft command called for the construction of more sea forts on the Thames in the immediate post-war period, and various new fort designs were put forward.
The Fort was dismantled in 1959, but the Red Sands and Shivering Sands Forts are still standing today. They have been used as pirate radio stations during the 60’s and 70’s, but since then have remained abandoned.

The Abandoned Pod City

The area is called San Zhi. There are no named architects since the whole site was commissioned by the government and several local firms. They were trying to create a posh luxurious vacation spot for the affluent and rich streaming out of Taipei. Now this is where things get weird. The local papers say there were numerous accidents during its construction, and as news spread to the urbanites of the island state, nobody wanted to vacation there, much less visit. Locals say the area is now haunted by those who died in vain and because they are not remembered, they linger there unable to pass on.

This explains why the area was abandoned. If the site is haunted, no amount of redevelopment is going to bring the masses to that spot. Even demolishing it is out of the question because destroying the homes of spirits and lost souls is a HUGE no-no in Asian culture

Shipwrecks on the coast of Mauritania 

The Bay of Nouadhibou, seven miles south from the Mauritanian city, hides one the biggest ship cemeteries in the world. There are more than 300 wrecks around the harbour, resting for years and coming from all nations.


A brief walk through Google Maps will show you hundreds of skeletons piled here and there, at the biggest collection of rusty giant ships you could ever imagine