It’s October again, and in time for Halloween, Endeavour’s Amazing World team have sniffed out a few more of the planet’s most mysterious sites. In Japan, they took a look at the Island of Hashima, otherwise known as Gunkanjima (Battleship Island). This abandoned, sea-bound city was built in the 1930s to house workers for a coal mine off of Japan’s coast. However, human rights violations and finally a rush to exit has left the concrete mini-metropolis an eerily empty, supposedly haunted industrial time capsule. Speaking of supposedly haunted locations, in Mexico, our team looked into the unsettling Isla de las Munecas – the Island of Dolls. This island truly earns its name and is not for the easily unnerved: the pictures alone are a bombardment on the imagination, and that’s before one even hears the island’s morbid origin story. Lasting, we looked at the Devil’s Kettle in Minnesota, USA, which has been perplexing scientists for years with its supposedly disappearing waterfall.
On a far brighter note, in our business features, we spoke with Oserian in Kenya – a flower farm that is not only leading the Kenyan floriculture industry, but originated it! Taking its name from the Maasai for “A place of peace”, Oserian is making incredible strides in not only the quality of its flowers, but the ecological efficiency of its farming, its green practices, and its support of both its staff and the wider area.
From one uplifting company to another, we also spoke with Lebanon’s Café Younes, a family-owned and run cafe chain that is successfully taking on corporate competition through a genuine love for coffee and attention to detail. However, this month hasn’t all been peaceful products; we’ve also spoken with several high flyers, including Air India, defence aeronautics company Denel, and Rolls Royce’s Singaporean go-to repairers of their Trent aircraft engines, SAESL. Talking of fantastic vehicles, we touched base with British sports car fanatics M-Sport.
We cover these and many more in our October issue. We hope you enjoy, and Happy Halloween!
