54 - Zennor, Cornwall, England, UK

On the coast due N of Penzance.

There is a local legend about a mermaid in Zennor.
Mathew Trewella was a good-looking young man with a good voice. Each evening Mathew would sing the closing hymn at the church in Zennor, solo. A mermaid living in neighbouring Pendour Cove was enchanted by the music. She dressed in a long dress to hide her long tail and walked a bit awkwardly to the church. Initially, she just marvelled at Mathew's singing before slipping away to return to the sea. She came every day, and eventually became bolder, staying longer. It was on one of these visits that her gaze met Mathew's, and they fell in love. However, the mermaid knew she had to go back to the sea or die. As she prepared to leave, Mathew said "Please do not leave, who are you, where are you from?".
The mermaid told him that she was a creature from the sea and that she must go back. Mathew was so love-struck that he swore he would follow her wherever she went. Mathew carried her to the cove and followed her beneath the waves, never to be seen again.
It is said that if you sit above Pendour Cove at sunset on a fine summer evening you might hear Mathew singing faintly on the breeze.
At St. Senara Church in Zennor visitors may see a carved bench-end over 600 years old showing the mermaid.

53 - Ydby, Denmark

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A triangular, vowelless hamlet, near the Danish NW coast. Here's their church:

51 - Xiinkaupunki (aka Kristiinankaupunki), Finland

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180mi NW of Helsinki, on the Gulf of Bothnia. There are not, as far as I can tell, any proper X-placenames in Scandinavia, so I had to make due with the Xmas-style abbreviation. (In Swedish, the town's name is the shorter Kristinestad).

The town shield is basically a map of the place, presumably up-close enough so the blue is the water of the fjord:

50 - Kapp Wien, Jan Mayen Island, Norway

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On the E coast of the Sør-Jan peninsula. The island is about halfway between Norway and Greenland. A little wikihistory:

The first known discovery of the island was in 1614. There are earlier claims and possible discoveries: Some historians believe that an Irish monk, Brendan, who was known as a good sailor, was close to Jan Mayen in the early 6th century. He came back from one of his voyages and reported that he had been close to a black island, which was on fire, and that there was a terrible noise in the area. He thought that he might have found the entrance to hell.

49 - Valencia, Spain

Basically due S of London.


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Here's the Decemberists' music video for "O Valencia":

48 - Umanaq, Greenland

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In a fjord on the mid-west coast. Here's an 1896 watercolor of a boy in Umanaq, by Arctic explorer Russell W. Porter:

47 - Tolvoyarvi, Russia

N. of St. Petersburg, on the Finnish border.


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I like how the terrain becomes much more mottled once you cross over into Finland—an artifact of the different countries' mapping resolution.

46 - St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow, Russia

Outside the Kremlin's Eastern wall.


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Wikipedia:

The initial concept was to build a cluster of chapels, one dedicated to each of the saints on whose feast day the tsar had won a battle, but the construction of a single central tower unifies these spaces into a single cathedral. A popular legend says that Ivan had the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, blinded to prevent him from building a more magnificent building for anyone else. However, Yakovlev designed the chapel added to the edifice in 1588, four years after Ivan's death, and had therefore not been blinded.

How many of the world's great monuments have attached lore about the architect being blinded/otherwise disabled afterwards? I think there's one about the Taj Mahal too.

45 - Ryl'sk, Russia

60mi. W of Kursk, 160mi E of Kiev. A merchant from Ryl'sk, Grigory Shelikhov, founded the first Russian settlements in North America. The town has quite a coat-of-arms:

44 - Qias, Iran

In the upper NW tip of the country, 20mi. from the Armenian border. Nothing to do with the site, but a "qias" image search turned out that particular string of letters in the Amazon.com url for this:

43 - Pal'vart, Turkmenistan

On the Oxus, 100mi. NW of the Afghan border.


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42 - Olonki, Russia

On the river that flows SE into Irkutsk and Lake Baikal.

41 - Novaya Zemlya, Russia

Big icecapped island N of Russia. In fact, it's the northernmost bit of the Urals. Atomicforum.com adds this:

The first nuclear test fired at Novaya Zemlya was an underwater test on September 21, 1955. It was a test of the RDS-9 warhead deployed on the 53-58 (T-5) torpedo. Over 30 ships were positioned around the explosion at distances ranging from 984 feet to 5249 feet. Among the ships were four destroyers, three submarines, minesweepers and seaplanes. Over 500 goats and sheep, 100 dogs, and other animals were on board the ships. Only one ship was sunk by the explosion, a destroyer less than 984 feet from the explosion.

40 - Mogocha, Russia

On the trans-Siberian railway, about 450mi E of Lake Baikal. Here's Wikipedia's history of the town. The last sweeping sentence is intriguing.

Name 'Mogocha' has at least two meanings in Evenk language: a. mongo - Evenk tribename and possessive suffix chi; b. "mongochi" means "golden valley". Local expression: "God created Sochi, and Satan Mogocha"
Mogocha was founded in 1910 and granted town status in 1950. Most of its population came from European part of the USSR to work for Trans-Siberian Railway company and in gold mines since the 1930s.
One third of Mogocha's population fled to nearby cities. This tendency is a Siberiawide practice because of notorious economic crisis of the 90s. At the same time a significant number of Chinese citizens and companies try to sing their roots in the region.

Photo from Transsib.ru.

39 - Loshkalakh, Russia

NW of Magadan, in far eastern Siberia. Here's a hitchhiking video from the region:

38 - Karaul, Russia

In the Arctic, near the mouth of the Yenise River.

37 - Jeghir, Iran

40mi. S of Tabriz.

In between lies this nice volcano:


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36 - Ikaría, Greece

20mi. NW of Patmos.

35 - Hadera, Israel

Halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Wiki:

Hadera was founded in 1891, at the dawn of modern Zionism by Eastern European immigrants who were members of the Zionist group Hovevei Zion on land purchased by Yehoshua Hankin, who was known as the Redeemer of the Valley. The land was purchased from Christian effendi Selim Khuri. The purchase of the land was the largest so far in Palestine by Zionist groups, although was of low quality, with most of it being swampland. Before its purchase, the land had hardly any residents apart from a few families belonging to small tribes who were mainly shepherds raising water buffaloes and selling reeds. The town derives its name from the Arabic word khadra, meaning "green" in reference to the wild weeds which covered the marshes on which the town is built.[1] The initial settlers lived in a house known as the Khan which is next to the main synagogue of the city.

34 - Gaziantep, Turkey

60mi N of Aleppo.

Here's a slideshow. With music!

33 - Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia

In the Red Sea, just N of the Yemeni border.

Wikipedia:

The Arabian gazelle (Gazella arabica) was an elusive gazelle that was hunted to extinction in its Middle Eastern homeland, Saudi Arabia. It is only known from a single specimen collected on the Farasan Islands in the Red Sea in 1825. Since the 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species this species is included as extinct by its Antelope Specialist Group.

This site:

Throughout western and southern Arabia, these variable gazelles were once common and widespread. Today the total global population is estimated to be no higher than 20 000.

32 - Esfahan, Iran

200mi. S of Qom.

31 - Dajal, Pakistan

At the Western slope of the Indus plain. Home to the eponymous cattle sub-breed:

30 - Chilwaria, Uttar Pradesh, India

80mi. NE of Lucknow.

29 - Babai, Madhya Pradesh, India

50mi. SE of Bhopal, on the Narnada River. Or south of the Naranda River (at least the two MP Babais on Google Maps are).

28 - Agartala, Tripura, India

Right on the E border with Bangladesh. They have a famous Durga Puja there ... or at least, most of the videos one finds about Agartala have to do with the Durga Puja. In this case: with snakes!

27 - Zanzibar, Tanzania

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The Z's right in the courtyard of the House of Wonders (Beit al-Ajab), so-called because of its early use of exterior lighting (the better for the Sultan to impress his Sultanate). Now it houses a museum, which, alas, I wasn't able to visit a few years back in '99 — if it'd even existed then. The park between the House of Wonders and the waterfront is home to all manner of tasty seaside vended-food, come nightfall.