The site where Michigan launched its first rocket into space lies abandoned in the dense woods along Lake Superior.

A hill carving of the legendary dragon that terrorized the village of Bures in the Middle Ages.

A clumsy-looking flying locomotive rusts within sight of a busy rail station.

A lumberjack in Finnish Lapland did not want to cut down his Arctic pines, so he offered them up to be adopted by nature-lovers.

The unusual lighthouse looms over waves of prairies with no sea in sight.

A set of 27 bamboo tubes creates an eerie soundscape that changes with the wind.

An abandoned network of military bunkers and tunnels open for anyone willing to descend into the darkness.

A medieval weapon rumored to have been used by the brilliant poet himself.

Although it appears ancient and mysterious, the quirky folly was actually built 200 years ago by an eccentric estate owner.

The secret room where early Bolsheviks cranked out propaganda fliers on a smuggled printing press.

With its peeling paint and faded sign, this theater-turned-recycling plant is a nostalgic relic of 1950s Americana.

The rusted hull of a WWII German destroyer pokes above the surface in a Norwegian fjord.

These Egyptian statues have survived for 3,400 years and were an acoustic wonder of the ancient world.

A fire once nearly devoured this gorgeous 14th-century Gothic cathedral.

This amazing abuela became a diehard metal fan late in life and an icon of Madrid's '80s rock scene.

Enchanting gardens surround a derelict mansion, all hidden in plain sight behind a stone wall.

A lonely beacon, precariously perched atop a remote sliver of rock.

The abandoned military base looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

This is what trains will look like after the zombie apocalypse.

One of the few surviving Panama Canal steam shovels stands outside a tiny Colorado mining museum.

After being lost for decades, this striking mural depicting the atomic bomb covers the wall of a busy Tokyo metro station.

The ruins of a grand theater destroyed during the most powerful seismic catastrophe ever recorded.

Centuries of human activity have forged an eerie landscape of ruins and craters on an exposed and windswept hilltop.

A hunk of prehistoric lava rests amid the Gothic architecture of a campus quad.