Winnipeg has a building with a very rare and unique design. The Canadian Grain Commission Building on Main near Portage has a bulge that makes the top floors wider than the bottom floors. According to Wikipedia it is called “Setfront design.”
Ernest J. Smith of Smith Carter was the principal architect of the Grain Commission’s current headquarters, nicknamed the “mushroom building”, the structure itself is a notable example of a Canadian skyscraper displaying Brutalist elements. The building’s “extended cap” was designed because of a space needed between the upper and lower floors for specialized mechanical equipment used to transport grain to an upper-level flour mill and test brewery. Smith remarked on the challenges involved:
Mixing two different functions in a vertical building is difficult. Normally construction would be separated horizontally. In this case, we worked out two separate modules for offices and lab space, [and] found we needed greater depth in the lab and rationalized the present form.
I surf tall building websites quite often. Mainly Skyscraperpage.com. In searching cities across North America and the world I have found only one other building with this setfront design.
It’s in Denver, 707-17th street. It has 42 stories compared to the Grain Commission at 17. Grain Commission is 220 feet tall while 707-17th is 550 feet. Only two buildings. And one in The Peg.
Dab smack in the middle of the eastern Canadian prairie is a tiny town called Somerset, Manitoba.
Somerset is sleepy little place where nothing much eventful ever happens. Farmers, mechanics and a few office workers going about their business. The main recreation in the place is gossiping about neighbors and talking about the latest casualty of old age. The towns population is overflowing with senior citizens. The only growth industry in town is the Old Folks retirement home.
Eventually the gossip began to speculate that there was a hoarder in town. Now this was interesting, the story really revved up the usually mundane restaurant chatter. As with all gossip, the facts are usually exaggerated and embellished. The chit chatters usually don’t care if the facts are unknown, they just like the story. But this time it was different.
The hoarder himself admitted that he was one. Constantijn Vanderrassle admitted to the local bartender that he had in fact been hoarding since the early 1990’s. It started after he retired from the railroad. He loved the things he bought from thrift stores, auctions and the picks he went on. And for the life of him he just couldn’t get rid of any of the stuff.
Constantijn’s house
A big structure with over a dozen rooms
After repeated requests Constantijn allowed the bartender Cletus LaFlesche to take a look. Cletus brought along his super dependable cannon XZ-500 digital camera and promptly snapped a picture of the living room.
Ignore the date in the bottom right corner, Cletus never did figure out how to set the clock on his camera. Since Constantijn was 92 years old Cletus wondered what in the hell he was doing with a little red wagon. Top left.
A few weeks after the visit something was bugging Constantijn that was causing him to drink more heavily than usual. He finally confided to Cletus that the damn house was haunted. He was seeing all kinds of weird entities. These phantoms, demons or whatever the hell they were, would throw the clustered hoarded things around in the middle of the night. Constantijn just couldn’t get any sleep.
One night, after the two buddies had drank many sambuca shooters and draft beers, they would go head first into the evil cauldron and Cletus would snap some pictures. The things in the pictures made the hair on Cletus’s neck stand on end. It was something out of a horror movie nightmare. Entities from hell!!
Bedroom
Bloody demon clowns!
WTF!!
Jesus Fricken Murphy!! The rancid breath that thing must exude.
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to go for a leak and stumbling into this monstrosity. A guy could shit his pants!
From which hell pit did this quad eyed hideous mutation crawl up from? God help us all!!
And Constantijn did just that, he hired a servant of God to rid the house of the demon trolls.
Constantijn promised Cletus that if the Exorcist is successful, he will bring in the A&E hoarder psychiatrists and movers and get rid of all his stuff once and for all.
Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8 is a New York City Fire Department (FDNY) fire station, located at 14 North Moore Street at its intersection with Varick Street in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Its exterior has become famous as the base of the Ghostbusters in the supernatural comedy film franchise of the same name.
The firehouse was selected as the base of the “Ghostbusters” for the 1984 film after an early draft of the script envisaged the Ghostbusters as a public service much like the fire department. Reportedly, the firehouse was chosen because writer Dan Aykroyd knew the area and liked the building. While the firehouse served as the set for exterior scenes, the interior of the Ghostbusters base was shot in a Los Angeles studio, and in Fire Station No. 23, a decommissioned Los Angeles firehouse.
In the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters, the firehouse makes two appearances.
The firehouse has also appeared in the 1994 film “The Mask” as a car repair facility, the 2005 film Hitch and in episodes of the television series Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother. In 2015, Lego announced a 4,634-piece “Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters” set based on the building, released in January 2016. It is the ninth-largest set ever made by Lego.
The Whisky War (also known as Liquor wars) is a pseudo-confrontation and border conflict between Denmark and Canada over Hans Island. Since the 1930s, Hans Island has been in the middle of a disagreement between the two nations.
Background
Hans Island is in the middle of the Kennedy Channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. A theoretical line in the middle of the strait goes through the island. Canada and Denmark could not come to terms on Hans Island in 1973 when a border treaty was signed, leaving a gap in its border description.
Conflict
In 1984, Canada provoked Denmark by planting its flag on the island and leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky. The Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself the same year with the Danish flag and a bottle of Snaps and a letter stating “Velkommen til den danske ø” (English: ‘Welcome to the Danish Island’).
Resolution efforts
Both countries agreed on a process in 2005 to resolve the issue.
Timeline
1980–1983 – Canadian firm Dome Petroleum did research on and around the island.
1984 – Tom Høyem, Danish Minister for Greenland, chartered a helicopter to the island, placing a flag and a bottle there.
1988 – The Danish Arctic Ocean patrol cutter HDMS Tulugaq arrived at the island, built a cairn and placed a flagpole and Danish flag on the island.
1995 – The Danish liaison officer and geodesists flew in and placed another flagpole and flag. Late August 1997 – The Danish Arctic/Ocean patrol cutter HDMS Agpa tried to reach the island, but was forced to turn around 241 km (150 mi) from the Island, owing to extreme ice.
2001 – Keith Dewing and Chris Harrison, geologists with the Geological Survey of Canada who were mapping northern Ellesmere Island, flew by helicopter to the island.
August 13, 2002 – The Danish inspection ship HDMS Vædderen arrived and erected a new cairn, flagpole and flag, finding the 1988 flag missing and the 1995 flag in pieces.
August 1, 2003 – The crew of the Danish frigate HDMS Triton landed on the island and replaced the Danish flag again.
July 13, 2005 – Canadian soldiers land on the Island, placing a traditional Inuit stone marker (Inukshuk) with a plaque and a Canadian flag.
July 20, 2005 – As a symbolic move, Canadian Defence Minister Bill Graham set foot on the island.
July 25, 2005 – A Danish government official announced Denmark would issue a letter of protest to Canada.
July 25, 2005 – Deputy premier of Greenland, Josef Motzfeldt, stated the island had been occupied by Canada, stating experts should determine which country the island belongs to.
July 28, 2005 – The Danish Ambassador to Canada published an article in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper regarding the Danish view on the Hans Island issue.
August 4, 2005 – The Danish Arctic/Ocean patrol cutter HDMS Tulugaq was sent from Naval Station Grønnedal to Hans Island to assert Danish sovereignty. The cutter was expected to arrive in three weeks’ time.
August 8, 2005 – Danish newspapers reported Canada wished to open negotiations regarding the future of Hans Island. The news was welcomed by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen who stated “It is time to stop the flag war. It has no place in a modern, international world. Countries like Denmark and Canada must be able to find a peaceful solution in a case such as this.”
August 16, 2005 – According to Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller, Denmark and Canada agreed to reopen negotiations regarding the future of Hans Island. Denmark would immediately begin geological surveys in the area, and Per Stig Møller would meet his Canadian counterpart Pierre Pettigrew in New York City in the middle of September. Should they fail to reach an agreement, both governments have agreed to submit the dispute to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The government of Greenland agreed to this course of action. Regarding the Danish patrol cutter HDMS Tulugaq then en route to Hans Island, the minister stated “I have instructed the ship to sail there, but they will not go ashore tearing down [the Canadian] flag and replacing it with a new one. It would be a somewhat childish [behaviour] between two NATO allies.”
August 20, 2005 – Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, stated Canada’s claim to the island had a firm basis in international law and would likely not end up before a world court. “Our sovereignty over the island has a very strong foundation,” the minister said in a telephone interview with a Canadian Press journalist.
September 19, 2005 – According to Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, Canada and Denmark have agreed on a process to resolve the dispute over the island. Pettigrew and his Danish counterpart, Per Stig Møller, met in New York on this day. Pettigrew said the two countries would work together “to put this issue behind us.” However Pettigrew reiterated Canada has sovereignty over the island.
August 16, 2006 – A Vancouver geologist receives a prospecting permit for Hans Island from the Canadian government.
March 17, 2007 – Scientists from the University of Toronto and the Technical University of Denmark announced plans to install an automated weather station on the island, some time in the summer of 2007.
July, 2007 – Canada updates satellite photos and recognizes its line constructed for the earlier maritime agreement would have run roughly through the middle of the island; negotiations continue with Denmark over establishing an international land boundary or island sovereignty.
May 4, 2008 – An international group of scientists from Australia, Canada, Denmark, and the UK installed an automated weather station on Hans Island.
April 11, 2012 – Proposal for Canada and Denmark to split Hans Island.
November 29, 2012 – Canada and Denmark settle an agreement on the exact border between them, though without defining the border near Hans Island.
May 23, 2018 – Canada and Denmark announce a Joint Task Force to settle the dispute over Hans Island.
February 2019 – Canadian geologist John Robins is granted a minerals exploration claim for Hans Island by the Canadian government as part of efforts to help the cause of Canada’s sovereignty claim.
September 12, 2019 – The Government of Greenland decided to approve a temporary closure of Hans Island for the application for mineral exploration permits. This approval was based on an agreement between the Government of Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark. The Canadian geologist John Robins therefore also had his minerals exploration claim for Hans Island suspended by the Canadian government. The Dane Andreas G. Jensen also had his application for mineral exploration permit rejected by the Kingdom of Denmark, because of this closure agreement.
Forget Area 51, America has an EVEN MORE secretive military test site named Area 6
A TOP secret airbase more mysterious than Area 51 has been spotted in the Nevada desert on Google Earth.
Area 6, a shielded airbase used for testing unmanned aircraft, has got conspiracy theorists wondering what the US Government might be hiding at such a remote location.
The site is roughly 12 miles northeast of Area 51 and is part of the Nevada National Security Site, where 1,000 nuclear tests were carried out between 1945 and 1995.
Six nuclear tests and four detonations have been completed in Area 6 according to the US Department of Energy.
The mysterious airbase has a 5,000ft runway used by federal agencies to carry out aircraft tests, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Its secretiveness has quickly led to comparisons with Area 51, where some conspiracy theorists believe the wreckages of crashed UFOs are stored and studied.
National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Darwin Morgan told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “We have controlled airspace and that gives them opportunities to test various types of platforms.
“We do a wide variety of work for others – supporting people with sensor development activities.
“It evolved from the nuclear testing program. We had to have very good sensors to collect data in a split second before they were obliterated.”
The Nevada National Security Site is run by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s field office in the state, which works with other agencies to develop ways of tackling terrorism.
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