Monument made up of small crosses celebrating 1700 of Christianity, is the Holy Cross Monument, located at the Armenian Alphabet Memorial Park in Artashavan. Standing 33 meters tall, the giant metallic structure is composed of exactly 1,711 smaller crosses, with a new one added every year to commemorate the time since Armenia adopted Christianity.
Visible from Turkey, it is a thorn in their side.
Yazidis worship one supreme God known as Xwedê, who created the world and entrusted its care to a heptad of seven divine beings or angels. Preeminent among these is Tawûsî Melek (the Peacock Angel), who serves as the chief intermediary between God and humanity.
Because Tawûsî Melek's mythology involves refusing to bow to Adam, outsiders have historically and incorrectly associated him with the Judeo-Christian figure of Satan, leading to the false, harmful label of "devil worshippers". In the Yazidi tradition, Tawûsî Melek is an inherently good force and a primary manifestation of the divine. Their faith also highly reveres holy figures like Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, a 12th-century mystic whose tomb in the Lalish valley in northern Iraq serves as the religion's holiest site.
We passed a la Verde the place where Marine' our guide comes from, we passed this copper mine where her parents worked their whole life until it closed
We saw a monument of the The story goes that, during the Korean War, the United States Air Force launched Operation Moolah, a psychological warfare gamble that offered a $100,000 reward (equivalent to over $1.1 million today) and political asylum to any Communist pilot who defected with a flyable MiG-15.
The goal was to secure an intact Soviet jet for Western engineers and test pilots to evaluate.The daring gamble succeeded on September 21, 1953, when North Korean Lieutenant No Kum-sok flew his MiG-15 across the DMZ and landed at Kimpo Air Base in South Korea.
No Kum-sok was completely unaware of the Operation Moolah reward, meaning his decision to defect was driven purely by a desire for freedom.
Because the entire radar system was down for maintenance when he crossed the DMZ at 600 mph, his escape was entirely undetected. After landing, he was greeted by base personnel, and his aircraft was quickly whisked away to be test-flown by American experts like Chuck Yeager.
The examination revealed that the MiG-15 possessed an impressive climb rate and altitude ceiling, but also had a dangerous tendency to spin out of control.
Following his defection, No Kum-sok immigrated to the United States, changed his name to Kenneth Rowe, and was paid the $100,000 reward he had previously known nothing about. His original MiG-15 is still preserved and on display today at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
Why was the MiG-15 so powerful?
In 1946, the British Labour government, led by Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Trade Minister Sir Stafford Cripps, unexpectedly agreed to sell dozens of cutting-edge Rolls-Royce Nene jet engines to the Soviet Union.
The sale was made under the strict agreement that the technology would only be used for non-military, commercial purposes.
Joseph Stalin was reportedly astonished by the deal, famously asking, "What fool will sell us his secrets?
As soon as the British engines arrived in Moscow, Soviet engineer Vladimir Klimov dismantled them and meticulously reverse-engineered the entire design. The Soviets manufactured their own exact copies domestically, first as the Klimov RD-45 and later upgraded to the Klimov VK-1.
When the Korean War began, United States engineers were shocked to discover that the terrifyingly fast MiG-15 interceptors outclimbing their own aircraft were powered by clones of Britain's own top-tier technology.
