Eastern State Penitentiary was the largest building in America when it opened in 1829. Its grounds still cover a dozen acres; its 30-foot-high walls extend for nearly a mile. It was America’s first penitentiary. Designed to inspire penitence in the heart of convicts, Some of America’s most notorious criminals were held in Eastern’s cells. When gangster Al Capone found himself in front of a judge for the first time in 1929, he was sentenced to one year in prison. He spent most of that sentence in relative comfort at Eastern State, where he was allowed to furnish his cell with antiques, rugs, and oil paintings. Bank robber Willie Sutton joined eleven other men in a doomed 1945 tunnel escape. By the 1960’s, the aged prison was in need of costly repairs. The Commonwealth closed the facility in 1971, 142 years after it admitted Charles Williams, Prisoner Number One. The City of Philadelphia purchased the site in 1980, intending to reuse or develop it. In 1988, with the prison site threatened with inappropriate reuse proposals, the Eastern State Penitentiary Task Force successfully petitioned Mayor Wilson Goode to halt redevelopment. The Pennsylvania Prison Society opened the Penitentiary for the first season of regular guided interpretative tours in 1994.

Cell ward

Bottom floor

Death Row Yard with Cell Block 11 decay

Operating Room

Medical Ward

Split hallway

Hallway of Decay

The Chair

Bathroom

Wooden cell doors

Cell ward

Cell

Artist installation

Cell

Al’s Cell

Cell Blocks

Entrance

credit: Forsaken Fotos

The human cost

5,665 people killed and 13,961 wounded in eastern Ukraine
5.2 million people estimated to be living in conflict areas
978,482 internally displaced people within Ukraine, including 119,832 children
600,000 fled to neighbouring countries, of whom more than 400,000 have gone to Russia

Photo Credit: EU/ECHO, Eastern Ukraine, Mathias Eick, March 2015

credit:  EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection

The Eastern & Oriental Express is a truly unique way to explore South-East Asia. It offers accommodation for 132 passengers in fully air-conditioned facilities similar to a luxury 5 star hotel. Luxury train operating in Singapore, Malaysia & Thailand. The train travels through dense rainforests and towering mountains past golden temples; rubber plantations and fields of frangiapani, tapioca, sunflowers and mango orchards; and remote towns and villages. Train from Singapore to Bangkok travels once or twice each month from March to December. Prices from £1,330 per person for two people sharing, including accommodation, tours and meals but excluding drinks. You will spend 2 nights, 3 days on the way, but for opposite journey from Bangkok to Singapore will take 3 nights, 4 days for same price.

credit: Train Chartering & Private Rail Cars

Rapa Nui aka Easter Island is the Polynesian island found in the south east Pacific Ocean. It is famous for the large monumental Moai statues, rock art carvings and paintings with unique motifs. On average, statues stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash.

credit: Viajar24h.com