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Random Windows Spotlight images

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Rainstorm over the Grand Canyon in Arizona

(© Images of the American West / Moment Open / Getty Images)

 

Arizona’s Grand Canyon is famous in part for its lack of people (except for those massing tourists around the national park’s viewing platforms). But this vast geological wonderland has been inhabited by humans for upwards of 12,000 years. Archaeological digs have uncovered Puebloan tribal sites offering evidence that people not only passed through the Grand Canyon in ancient eras, but some actually called the riverbank and caves home. The Havasupai tribe began to settle in the area some eight centuries ago and their descendants are residents of the Grand Canyon to this day. This massive gorge of the Colorado River has been a US national park for only a comparatively short period of time—since February 1919.

 
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Kayakers in Firth of Clyde, Scotland

(© Kenny Williamson / Getty Images)
 
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Mykines, in the Faroe Islands

 

Wave-battered cliffs, torrential rain, and a haunting beauty–the remote Faroe Islands have an allure all their own. These 18 rugged islands lie halfway between Iceland and Norway. The resilient locals are mostly ethnic Faroese, descendants of Norse and Gaelic peoples. We’re looking at Mykines here, the westernmost of the Faroes, where the 2004 head count put the human population at 11. And while people aren’t flocking to the island, birds find it a great place to roost. Cliffs made of soft volcanic layers interspersed with basalt provide ideal nesting grounds for thousands of seabirds, including puffins and gannets.

 
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El Castillo pyramid at Xunantunich in Belize

(© Suzi Pratt / 500px Prime / Getty Images)

 

People have not inhabited this site in western Belize for a thousand years, but something else is said to roam the place. The name Xunantunich (Stone Woman or Maiden of the Rock) was given to this ancient Mayan archaeological complex in the 19th century. The name is said to be derived from the sighting of a ghostly figure of a woman who disappears as one gets nearer to her. Other aspects of these city ruins are decidedly more solid: Six plazas and more than 25 palaces and temples are preserved within roughly one square mile, situated high on a plateau above the Mopan River. Our image is of the monumental pyramid called El Castillo, the country's second-tallest structure.

 
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Hydrangea flower

(© Anna Efetova / Moment / Getty Images)
 
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The village of Thurne in The Broads, England

(© stevendocwra / Moment / Getty Images)

 

At first glance you might assume that the bucolic scene in our image is located somewhere in the Netherlands. Or perhaps the Belgian countryside. The windmill in the distance may throw some viewers off, but those structures aren't all that rare in this part of eastern England . The Broads is located mostly within the county of Norfolk and is a system of inland waterways, a navigable landscape of canals, rivers, and lakes—the latter known as 'broads.' Up until the 1960s, experts believed these lakes were natural. But they were actually formed when peat excavations were flooded by rising sea levels in the Middle Ages. And that windmill—or, more accurately windpump—in our image? Like others in the area, this one in Thurne served to drain canals in the wetlands.

 
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Interior of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy

(© Pekic / iStock / Getty Images Plus)

 

Even by today’s standards, the Roman Colosseum (or Flavian Amphitheatre) is one of the world’s grandest monuments, and not merely because of its size alone. Modern sporting events seem tame compared to the extravagant and often brutal spectacles that killed thousands of people and animals here. An intricate network of pulleys, trapdoors, and tunnels below the floor allowed for animals and gladiators to leap into the action, surprising their foes. Early on, before these mechanisms were put in place, the floor could even be flooded for mock naval battles. The largest amphitheater ever built in the Roman Empire, the Colosseum routinely held 65,000 spectators, and attendance could swell to some 80,000 when fully packed.

 
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