via Creative Street Art Series » Design You Trust – Design and Beyond!.
In the depths of northeastern India, bridges aren’t built—they’re grown. The Ficus elastica produces a series of secondary roots from higher up its trunk and can comfortably perch atop huge boulders along the riverbanks, or even in the middle of the rivers themselves. The War-Khasis, a tribe in Meghalaya, long ago noticed this tree and saw in its powerful roots an opportunity to easily cross the area’s many rivers. Now, whenever and wherever the need arises, they simply grow their bridges.
In order to make a rubber tree’s roots grow in the right direction—say, over a river—the Khasis use betel nut trunks, sliced down the middle and hollowed out, to create root-guidance systems. The thin, tender roots of the rubber tree, prevented from fanning out by the betel nut trunks, grow straight out. When they reach the other side of the river, they’re allowed to take root in the soil. Given enough time, a sturdy, living bridge is produced.
The root bridges, some of which are over a hundred feet long, take ten to fifteen years to become fully functional, but they’re extraordinarily strong, with some of them able to support the weight of fifty or more people at a time. Because they are alive and still growing, the bridges actually gain strength over time. Some of the ancient root bridges used daily by the people of the villages around Cherrapunji may be well over 500 years old. [Source: ATLAS OBSCURA]
via Picture of the Day: Living Root Bridges of Meghalaya, India.
This is purportedly the first picture of a living person ever taken (1838). The image shows a busy street, but due to exposure time of more than ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show. Look closely and you will also see another man sitting on a bench to the right reading a newspaper. Also in the upper left hand side you can also see another man standing under the awning of the 3rd building from the left.
What looks to be a woman standing under the street lantern at 10 o’clock from the man getting his shoes shined and another one in the big white building, 1st row 3rd window down. Notice the child in the top floor window of the white building in front. Note that the image is reversed (as were most Daguerreotypes) as is evidenced by the writing on a building in upper left.
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silver plated copper plate. The surface of a daguerreotype is like a mirror, with the image made directly on the silvered surface. [Source]