In western Germany, the country’s longest rope suspension bridge, a pedestrian bridge spanning Geierlay Canyon between the towns of Mörsdorf and Sosberg, opened Oct. 3, 2015. The 1,200-foot-long, 298-foot-high bridge is free to cross as part of a series of hiking trails. For photos and video, visit www.geierlay.de/haengeseilbrueck (in German only).
A nearly 1,000-foot-long, 590-foot-high glass-bottomed bridge, called Haohan Qiao (Brave Man’s Bridge), opened in September at Shiniuzhai National Geological Park in southeastern China’s Hunan Province. Entry to the park costs CNY98 (near $15.50).
Shortly after opening, a glass panel on the bridge cracked, reportedly due to a dropped cup. Officials said the cracked panel would be replaced and that visitors were in no danger. Each panel (a few feet by a few feet) is made up of three layers of 24-millimeter-thick glass, can hold up to 1,763 pounds and is encased in steel.
Purported to be the seamless garment that Jesus Christ wore before he hung on the cross, the Holy Tunic of Argenteuil will be displayed at the Basilica Saint-Denys d’Argenteuil (17 rue des Ouches, 95100 Argenteuil, France; phone +33 01 39 61 03 29, www.catholique95.com/basilargenteuil [in French only]), March 25-April 10, 2016, in honor of the Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis.
Usually displayed only once every 50 years (last in 1984), the tunic has been kept in Argenteuil since around 800.
Drivers on the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau expressway near Hong Kong encountered a 50-lane traffic jam involving thousands of cars on Oct. 9. The jam occured when drivers returning home at the end of China’s “Golden Week” holiday (when an estimated 750 million drivers use China’s roads) encountered a newly installed toll plaza that reduced the number of lanes from 50 to 20.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has upgraded Nicaraguan carriers from Category 2 to Category 1 in their International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA), due to that nation’s compliance with the International Civil Aviation Authority’s regulations.
The Greek Archaeological Council decided on Oct. 14 to increase entry prices to some of Greece’s most popular tourist sites starting Jan. 1, 2016.
Among fee hikes are the following. In Athens, the entry fee to the Acropolis will rise from €12 to €20 (near $22), and the National Archaeological Museum will cost €10. The fee goes from €6 to €15 at the Knossos archaeological site in Crete and from €8 to €12 at the archaeological site and museum at Mycenae. The Archaeological Museum of Heraklion will cost €10.
View wildlife of Arctic Manitoba at the “Journey to Churchill,” a 10-acre permanent exhibit in the Assiniboine Park Zoo (2595 Roblin Blvd., Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3P 2N7; 204/927-6000, www.assiniboineparkzoo.ca).
See Arctic foxes, caribou and musk oxen in the “Wapusk Lowlands,” watch seals and polar bears through underwater viewing windows in the “Gateway to the Arctic” and see northern lights projected onto a domed ceiling in the theater.
For visits to Australia, the GPS-based “Welcome to Country” iPhone app alerts the user whenever he crosses the boundary of a traditional tribal group. He is directed to a video in which an elder or “knowledge carrier” provides information about the culture and customs in the area, using speech or song or showing a dance or ceremony.
Version 1.0 of the app has a map and covers more than 30 indigenous tribes and language groups (from a total of over 500). Visit the iOS AppStore.
Memorializing slavery and the slave trade in the Caribbean, the Mémorial ACTe slavery museum (Darboussier, Rue Raspail, Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, FWI; phone +590 590 25 16 00, www.memorial-acte.fr/home-page.html) opened on the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on July 7.
3,300 fossilized footprints from three species of dinosaur — an herbivorous ornithopod similar to a duck-billed dinosaur, a chicken-sized carnivore and a tyrannosaurus-type carnivore — which paleontologists have determined were created during one predatory event, have been preserved in a climate-controlled building at the Lark Quarry Conservation Park on Winton Jundah Road, southwest of Winton, Queensland, Australia.