Things I learnt today: Fjarðabyggð

Around 75% of the working population in Fjarðabyggð, eastern Iceland, are Polish. (This is probably due to the big aluminium smelter situated there. Also the population in Fjarðabyggð is 5 206 persons in total.) Polish citizens are also the largest minority on Iceland as a whole, making up 3% of the population.

Also, for some reason unknown to me, there’s also street signs bilingual in Icelandic and French.

Fáskrúðsfjörður bilingualroadsign

GPS tracking can be an artform

GPS artist Yasushi “Yassan” Takahashi started out his career as a GPS artist in 2008 by proposing to his girlfriend by making a 7 163.67 km long GPS drawing spelling out “Marry me” stretching across the whole of Japan.

Since that successful start he has done 1 400 GPS artworks and has drawn over more than 100,000 kilometers in 24 countries.

Source: My Modern Met

Switzerland opens world’s steepest railway

The Stoos Bahn has opened to the public in Switzerland and is now the world’s steepest railway – or funicular with the exact terminology.

It runs from the town of Schwyz up 110m to the car-free Alpine village of Stoos and the steepest gradient is 110%. Due to the gradients involved it also has specially constructed cylindrical wagons with tilting floors in order to make the short journey more comfortable for the riders.

Source: BBC News

Australia gets the world’s largest battery

The largest lithium-ion battery pack ever constructed has been successfully deployed in the state of South Australia. The 100 MW battery aims to be the solution for South Australia’s problems with fluctuating energy demand which at times have been able to severely strain the state’s power grids.

The battery is constructed by Tesla and is one of its high-profile visionary man Elon Musk’s latest projects. He even went as far as vowing that it would be built within a 100-day period or the state could have it for free. And finished within the narrow time-frame it was.

Source: BBC News