The world’s first sand-hotel is open for business on Weymouth beach, Dorset, in England. The 1000 tone-of-sand structure was built in a week by a team of 4 sand-sculptors and is only expected to last until it rains…which, as you probably know, happens quite often in Britain.
The sand-hotel was commissioned by a local travel website that, upon doing some research, found out that 57% of English tourists prefer foreign beach-destinations instead of national ones. So this is like a statement that signifies the rebirth of British tourism. The sand hotel has no roof, so you have a clear view of the star-filled night sky, no toilets and is not recommended for those that hate getting sand between their toes. For an offbeat experience like spending a night at the wonderful sand-hotel, you only have to pay $21, more than a fair price, in my opinion.

Last time I saw a cruise ship in a city was in that crappy sequel to Speed (starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock), what was it called again…oh yeah, Speed 2. But this particular ship didn’t actually sail to the middle of Hong Kong, it was built there. Whampoa ship is one of the main tourist attraction Hong Kong has to offer and one of the most unusual commercial centers in the world. It has the size of an actual cruise ship and inside you can find many restaurants, shops and even a hotel. To see how much Whampoa really is, just look it up on Google Maps, or better yet take a trip to Hong Kong.

Living up to its hype, the Amitabh Bachchan-led Unforgettable Tour opened to an unprecedented response in Toronto, Canada. Billed as the biggest-ever Bollywood live show abroad, the three-hour inaugural kept the 10,000-strong audience at the Rogers Centre riveted.

Abhishek popped up somewhere in the crowd and had to be escorted to the stage. Once on stage, he raised the tempo further by belting out hit songs from his films such as Dus and Bunty Aur Babli. His Dus bahane karke le gaye dil left his female fans hysteric. Old timers tapped their feet when he sang his father's Khai ke paan Banaras wala from Don. And as expected, Ash drove the audience crazy with her super hit Crazy kiya re. For his part, Big B had something for everyone - from Rang barse (Silsala) to Roop hai tera sona, sona (Kabhi Kushi, Kabhi Gham) to Kajra re (Bunty Aur Babli).

A virtual stampede broke out near the stage when he offered any girl to come on stage and sing a love song with him. Having chosen one, he offered her a gift box before singing with him. And when she unwrapped the box, out came a nightgown! Before the sheepishly smiling girl could recover, he wrapped his arm around her and launched into Bheegay honth tere from the film Murder.

Beautiful Seashell Temple "Temple of the Dawn" in Bangkok. The seashells and bits of porcelain used to make the mosaic designs had previously been used as ballast by boats coming to Bangkok from China. The full name of the temple is Wat Arunratchawararam Ratchaworamahavihara.

The temple is decorated with seashells and bits of porcelain.

Two studies based on data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that the Red Planet once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life. One study, published in the July 17 issue of Nature, shows that vast regions of the ancient highlands of Mars, which cover about half the planet, contain clay minerals, which can form only in the presence of water. Volcanic lavas buried the clay-rich regions during subsequent, drier periods of the planet's history, but impact craters later exposed them at thousands of locations across Mars. The data for the study derives from images taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, and other instruments on the orbiter. "The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was, and how diverse the wet environments were," said Scott Murchie, CRISM principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, preserve a record of the interaction of water with rocks dating back to what is called the Noachian period of Mars' history, approximately 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. This period corresponds to the earliest years of the solar system, when Earth, the moon and Mars sustained a cosmic bombardment by comets and asteroids. Rocks of this age have largely been destroyed on Earth by plate tectonics. They are preserved on the moon, but were never exposed to liquid water. The phyllosilicate-containing rocks on Mars preserve a unique record of liquid water environments possibly suitable for life in the early solar system. "The minerals present in Mars' ancient crust show a variety of wet environments," said John Mustard, a member of the CRISM team from Brown University, and lead author of the Nature study. "In most locations the rocks are lightly altered by liquid water, but in a few locations they have been so altered that a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil. This is really exciting because we're finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life." This three-dimensional image of a trough shows a type of minerals called phyllosilicates (in magenta and blue hues) concentrated on the slopes of mesas and along canyon walls. The abundance of phyllosilicates shows that water played a sizable role in changing the minerals of a variety of terrains in the planet's early history.