Yuri Gagarin left the earth in 1961, from the middle of the Kazakh desert.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome was the Russian capital of space travel: 6717 square kilometers, dozens of launch pads, and a 1500-kilometer rocket test range. Spaceship parts would arrive by train. Nowadays, although still in service, the Russian space program is surrounded by acres upon acres of discarded and forgotten equipment. A lack of funds means that most of the area has been abandoned, with newborn capitalists making off with tons of unguarded scrap.

When the Buran program - the Soviet counterpoint to the space shuttle - was canceled in 1993, stray material was traded off to Kazakhstan to pay the bills. In 2002, a badly-maintained hanger housing collapsed onto a Buran orbiter, destroying it. The collapse also killed eight people.

At Cape Canaveral, the booster rockets fall into the Atlantic and get towed back to shore. But this is Kazakhstan, land of crude oil, beautiful horses and curious Kazakh children. The ground is littered with fallen rocket parts, turning the middle of nowhere into a spaceship graveyard.

Russia pays Kazakhstan a hefty $115 million a year for this place. The deal lasts until 2050.

The Eighth Wonder of the World has been built by a 57-year old former insurance broker.

This man had childhood visions of his past life in a lost civilization, and swore to rebuild what he saw. He first dug a trial tunnel under his own parents house to better understand the science of excavation, and later bought a home on a remote hillside in northern Italy. And from 1978 and on, an international stream of volunteers took to the earth with pickaxes.

The resulting “Temple of Mankind” is twenty times the size of Big Ben. There are nine temples on five levels bedecked with murals, statues, and elaborate stained glass. Sculpted columns reach eight meters high, and are wreathed in gold leaf. When the police finally discovered the temple (by threatening to blow up the hillside with dynamite), they seized it for the government.

The government has since approved everything. The “Damanhurians,” as they are known, now run their own university, supermarkets, and ecovillages. Multiple Damanhurian centers exist throughout Italy, and have chapters as far away as Japan, Slovenia, and Iceland.

Right hook to left jaw. Checkmate.

Proponents describe chessboxing as the ultimate fusion sport for the body and the mind. For up to eleven rounds, a chessboxing match alternates between three-minute rounds of uppercuts and jabs, and four-minute rounds of studious, deliberate protection of your king.

Chessboxing is not a game for amateurs. Participants are required to have boxed in at least twenty matches, be less than thirty-five years old, and an ELO rating (used for measuring chess skill) of no less than 1800. If not sparring, training often involves running laps or hitting a sandbag, and then sitting down for blitz rounds of pawns, bishops and knights.

The world capitol of the chessboxing world sits firmly in Berlin: the 2007 Light-Heavyweight World Champion was none other than German Frank ‘Anti-Terror’ Stoldt. The Chess Boxing Club Berlin has been active since 2005, and since 2006 there have opened two schools who offer chessboxing programs to children. But moves are being made to expand into Russia and the Ukraine, where there apparently reside legions of experienced chessboxers.

In Bolivia’s San Pedro Prison, you rent your cell.

They can be quite nice, if you have the money. Well-off prisoners can enjoy televisions, private bathrooms, and kitchenettes. One drug baron, Barbachoca (’Redbeard’) added a second story so that he could see the mountains - although poorer inmates often live six to a room. In your off-hours, perhaps you can play on the local football team, which is sponsored by Coca-Cola.

You can also run businesses, offering anything from photographic studios to groceries to tourism. San Pedro Prison actually become a hopping tourist destination, thanks to both its unique system, and its reputation for top-notch cocaine. In many respects, this tiny prison is no different than Bolivia at large: fueled by drugs, corruption, and a strong sense of family.

If you happen to have a family, they can live with you - they can hardly afford to live outside. Children come and go to school during the day, and are really quite safe. Like most prisons, any new inmates who have hurt or abused children are quickly killed by an angry mob. Here in San Pedro, they are often drowned in ‘the pool,’ a pit of stagnant water in the local courtyard.

Come for the food, stay to beat your waiter.

At the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing, China, the clientele are allowed and even encouraged to take our their daily frustration and rage in a mostly harmless fashion: by attacking specially trained employees. The customers may rant, smash glass, or perhaps even kick some shins if the mood inspires them. The employees are provided with protective gear.

Most of the patrons, as it turns out, are women who work in the service or entertainment industries. Patrons can also request that their servers dress in a particular way, so as to better resemble a boss or co-worker. The term ‘Rising Sun,’ meanwhile, generally refers to China’s neighbor, Japan - a geographical relationship which China has rarely, if ever, enjoyed.

In case of a particularly stressed client, the bar’s owner, Mr. Wu, provides one further service. He has recruited psychology students from local universities to offer psychiatric counseling.

(Picture: ‘Bus Uncle,’ Hong Kong)

Australians. Hate. Cane toads.

They have every reason to. Introduced in the 1930s from Hawaii to control native cane beetles, cane toads failed in their mission miserably. But they have since reproduced like rabbits on crystal meth, taking Australia’s ecology by storm. They are also studded with bufotoxin-laced warts, which are poisonous enough to kill hungry local crocodiles, let alone beloved pet dogs. Australians are often encouraged to slaughter the buggers wherever they find them, and one scientific research project is in the works to turn them all male, causing population collapse.

All the same, some Australians find themselves with a grudging respect for these seemingly unstoppable creatures. A 1988 documentary, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, approached the subject with fantastically deadpan Australian humour. And a 2003 short film, ‘What Happened to Baz?‘ won the Best Comedy award at the St. Kilda Film Festival.

So inevitably, they have been turned into fashion accessories. Cane toad purses, wallets and handbags are a common sight throughout this island continent, land of Waltzing Matilda and Stirling Mortlock. Their carcasses can serve as fertilizer, and properly prepared - skinned, their poisonous glands removed - general agreement is that they taste like chicken. Because with an estimated two hundred million toads to go around, there’s no reason to let them go to waste.

This shark from a shark derby in Nova Scotia has nothing to do with this post, but its a damn cool thing in a random place as sharks aren’t supposed to look like this in Nova Scotia (at least I hope not while I’m surfing!)One of the best responses to this site as been “it is like a bag of potato chips, once you start reading…”Do you have some cool or weird thing in mind that could grace the pages of CTIRP?Register below and create your own posting with a short bio and a link to your site if you would like.Tips: Keep it short, sweet, and use a gripping title. Great photos are also a must! So be creative and share those international oddities. REGISTER HERE

Beat your wife in India, and you’ll be beaten back. By a mob of women in pink saris.

They are the Gulabi (’Pink’) Gang, in one of India’s northern states and poorest regions. Theirs is an area comprised of 20% untouchables, beset by drought and unemployment, and targeted in the past for a massive jobs-for-work program. But local government officials regularly come down against the poor: a policeman recently arrested an untouchable, but didn’t register a case against him. The Gulabi Gang stormed the precinct, and gave the policeman a thrashing.

Their spitfire leader says they are ‘a gang for justice.’ Sampat Pal Devi was forced into marriage at the age of 12, and had her first child when she was 13. This is hardly unusual: in village society, the deck is heavily stacked against women’s rights and education. She worked as a government health worker, organizing meetings with neighborhood women on her own time.

They aren’t all women. Men speak with equal passion not just about dowries or child marriages, but about diminishing water resources and farm subsidies. The Gulabi Gang leaped into the spotlight only after it intercepted three tractors of wheat being pilfered from a public distribution program. They beat the thieves with lathis - traditional Indian sticks - and sandals.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine is known as ‘the underground cathedral of Poland.`This is because an entire city has been carved out of its very walls. Over the years, legions of anonymous workers carved bits of their workplace into everything they could think of, from saints to gnomes. Starting in the late 19th century, three miners decided to etch out a whole chapel as well, to the patron saint of mining, St. Kinga. It took them sixty-eight years.Salt used to be as valuable as silver. First evidence of this mine’s existence comes from 1044 A.D., and tourists have been recorded since the 15th Century - including Poland’s premier astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus. The twists and turns of the mine – only three percent of which tourists can access - stretch for two hundred kilometers, and go as far as three hundred meters underground. Some of the tunnels are so wide that they were used as airplane factories by the Nazis.Buried beneath one of the most Catholic countries on the planet, the mine also has restaurants, bars, and a formal dance area that is great for weddings. And lest you ever forget where you stand, even the chandlers are dripping with salt.

Every year in New York City, a five-foot penguin walks the streets.

He is actually half-penguin, half-chicken: “Chengwin.” And for whatever reason, this oversized Sesame Street hallucination has become an annual fixture in the streets of downtown Gotham. He always arrives with a cheering hipster mob, oftentimes with a live band in tow, to battle his archnemesis: his half-brother, Chunk. Chunk is half-chicken, half-skunk, and has his own entourage of black-clad musclenecks in dark shades. People rarely cheer for Chunk.

They battle. They literally rumble in the streets, mostly by way of head butts and kicks to the shin. But this is more than a mere guerrilla theater street fight: it is Chengwin versus Chunk, good versus evil. Ignore the hipsters behind the curtains: this is a morality tale, a fable come to life, and the fairy tale ending always wins out. Always, Chengwin emerges victorious.

The half-chicken/half-something family has expanded over the years: there is Chove, a half-chicken/half-dove whom Chengwin married in 2006; Chabio, half-chicken/half-Fabio, who is dreamy; and Chixon, half-chicken/half-Nixon, who is cantankerous. There have been weddings, foot races, and a Million Chengwin March. But always, there is the war.

Don’t ask why.