The Rungwecebus Kipunji.

Hidden from mankind in the thick forests of southern Tanzania, Africa, the striking Rungwecebus Kipunji monkey has evaded detection – until now!

Living at an altitude of 8,000 feet and with a honking bark and Mohican hairstyle, it is the first new species of monkey to be found for 83 years.

Scientists spent a year trekking through forest in search of the Rungwecebus after reports last year (2005) by locals of a mysterious grey and brown tree-dwelling creature.

What they found was a three-foot tall monkey genetically linked to baboons living on leaves, shoots, bark, fruit and insects whose natural predators are eagles and leopards.

It has been named after Mount Rungwe where it was first spotted.

Scientists have discovered 19 groups – each group consisting of 30 to 36 adult males and females – in the Rungwe-Livingstone forest.

Dr William Stanley, of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago said: “This is exciting news because it shows that the age of discovery is by no means over.”

What is really amazing about the Rungwecebus is that it is not only a new species but an entirely new genus – a larger genetic group into which species sub divide.

Primate expert John Oates from Hunter College in New York said: “To find in the 21st century and entirely new species of large monkey living in the wild is surprising enough.

“To find one that can be placed in a new genus, and that sheds light on the evolutionary history of the monkey of Africa and Eurasia as a whole, is truly remarkable.”

The discovery has reinforced the view that the mountains of southern Tanzania have played an important role as a refuge for many species long extinct elsewhere.

The lost tribes of Vanuatu, south west Pacific Ocean.

Vanuatu is an 80-island nation with a population of just 211,000. It really is the land that time forgot and is home the most remote and untouched bush tribe in the world – the Mareki.

Living on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu’s largest island, the Mareki live deep in the interior. Women go topless and men wear loincloths. Christianity has not crept in to the traditions or dances.

They are geographically imprisoned by vertical mountain ranges and deep valleys and rushing rapids making their homelands virtually impenetrable.

And there is no reason to leave – the towns on the coast are undeveloped with no traffic lights, postal service or the usual trappings of civilisation. With 80 per cent of the population on the coast living on subsistence farming, the Mareki prefer to stay put.

Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA.

The peak of Mauna Kea, an inactive volcano in Hawaii, reaches 4, 205 metres or 13, 796 feet above sea level. However, the base of the mountain is the sea bed of the Pacific Ocean and it’s full height from foot to summit is a mighty 10, 205 metres or 33, 480 feet. That is 4, 445 feet higher than Everest which stands at 8, 850 metres or 29, 035 feet.

The deepest dweller in the ocean

A 20cm long fish has been found living at a depth of 8, 370 metres – 27, 455 feet – in the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Cuskeel is an elongated fish with smooth scales and is by no means a monster of the deep – in fact it looks quite inoffensive.

It occupies the deepest part of the ocean – the abyss - where it is pitch black. The Cuskeel has a weak soft body like all other fish at this depth.

One of its species was caught in the Tasman Sea at a depth of 3, 300 metres – 10, 826 feet and is now in the Australian Museum – but the fish recorded in the Puerto Rico Trench is the deepest ever found.

The Sewer children of Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

With a threadbare economy,  freezing climate and widespread poverty, Mongolia’s forgotten children suffer the most.

As a satellite state of the former Soviet Union, this almost third world country has struggled to survive in the post communist world.

In Ulan Bator, the capital, where temperatures in winter can drop to minus 25 degrees, hundreds, possibly thousands of children live underground to survive.

They cram into the sewers – six foot by six foot pipe networks - where they huddle for warmth and shelter.

They survive on scavenged scraps of food or what they can beg from passers by. Nearly all of them are beset by respiratory problems.

Outside the capital, on the plains that make up the countries vast terrain, temperatures can plunge to minus 40 degrees and many of the 2.4 million population still live in tents made from wood and felt. Poverty forces many to flee to the city but unbounded by the Soviet rules where divorce was forbidden, many children have becomes victims of broken families and ended up on the streets and in the sewers.

Child Killers in the City of God.

The gangland movie epic City of God, set in the favelas, or slums, of Rio de Janeiro, showed the world children as young as ten killing at random – and it was all true.

The story of how young children turn to gangs, which control drugs in the city slums, and gain respect by shooting members of opposing gangs, stunned crime experts.

Drug gangs control Rio’s 600 slum areas where more than one million people live.

The favelas are no go areas for police and shootings are a daily occurrence.

In one typical incident in 2003, 30 gang members aged from 10 to 25, and armed with grenades and sub machine guns, ambushed a police patrol car killing two officers and an innocent by-stander. The incident was not untypical. An estimated 11,000 young men are now members of drug gangs in Rio with half aged under 18. The situation is so bad that gunshot deaths in Rio have exceeded those in some conflict zones, including Colombia. Almost 3,000 people in Rio, a city of 5.8 million, are shot dead each year.

The rarest insect in the world

Named after an island off the east coast of Australia, the Lord Howe Island stick insect is the world’s rarest insect.

A nocturnal creature more than 12 centimetres long and 1.5 centimetres wide – it is known locally as a land lobster or walking sausage.

It was a common sight on the island until the early 20th century.

It was presumed extinct for more than 80 years after black rats made their way on to the island from a grounded ship in 1918.

But in 2001 a scientific expedition discovered a tiny colony of the animals surviving precariously under a single bush at the top of a 550 metre high rock stack on the island called Balls Pyramid.

On Valentine’s Day in 2003 two breeding pairs were captured and taken to Melbourne Zoo where a successful breeding programme is now in place.

The ultimate goal is to reintroduce the species to Lord Howe Island.

Child sweat shops

If you go into a shop to buy your son or daughter a soccer ball there is a good chance it has been made by someone your child’s age.

Child slavery is still rife in our world. In 2004 it was estimated that 179 million children around the world were working – effectively as slaves.

The practice is rife in third world countries where it is virtually accepted.

The sports equipment manufacturing giant Nike has admitted that it is virtually powerless to prevent the practice in the production of it soccer balls in Pakistan because local practices allow it.

In Pakistan a typical person survives on around £3 a day – and that wage will feed 10 months. Child labour is spread all over Pakistan which has a reputation for the cheap manufacture of sporting goods. Sialkot in north west Punjab Province is the centre and even though child labour is against the law it is not enforced.

The Coldest permanently Inhabited place on earth.

Oymyakon is a village of about 800 people in the north east of the Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia, Russia, and is just a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. Temperatures have plummeted to a record low of minus 96.16 degrees Fahrenheit – or minus 71.2 degrees Celsius.

Before the 1920s and 30s the Soviet government, in its efforts to settle nomadic populations – claiming they were difficult to control – made the trading post - a permanent settlement.

The population eat reindeer and horsemeat with no or little fruit and vegetables.

The only way to stay warm is by wearing fur. Synthetic fibres do not work nearly as well at such low temperatures. Diesel freezes at minus 50 degrees Celsius and drivers light fires beneath tanks to keep it from freezing and axle grease is warmed with a blow torch. Pen ink freezes, batteries lose power faster and metal sticks to skin.

The most northerly post office in Britain

For the most northerly or remotest place in Britain you need to visit Shetland. Because most maps of Scotland include Shetland in a little box near the top right hand corner not many people have a sense of where this group 100 islands and islets is. It is further north than Moscow or southern Greenland! It has a population of just 23,000. The most northerly of the islands is Unst and that makes it the most northerly inhabited place in Britain. It measures 12 miles from north to south and five miles from east to west and has a population of around 1000.

Baltasound is the capital of Unst and is home to Britain’s most northern post office run by sub post mistress Valerie Johnson.

Haroldswick Post Office several miles to the north held the title until 2000 when the post mistress retired and no one could be found to replace her.

The next nearest post office to Baltasound is a ferry ride away.

Valerie, 40, married with three children, said: “I must stay open for the community.”

The “Dog Boy” of Chile

In June, 2001, the residents of Santiago, the capital of Chile, reported that an unnamed young boy had been seen roaming the streets with wild dogs.

The 10-year-old was tracked down and found living in a cave on the outskirts of the city with a pack of 15 animals.

Care workers said he scavenged for food with the dogs and that his “family” may have even suckled him. He showed signs of depression and was very aggressive.

It emerged that the boy had been thrown out of his home by abusive parents aged five and had been with the dogs for two years after running away from a care home aged eight.

“He lived in a cave with dogs and roamed the streets looking for food with them. He would eat out of garbage cans and find leftovers,” said Delia Delgatto, head of Chile’s national childcare service.

“He wasn’t reared by the dogs as such, he lived with them in a cave and they were his family,” she added.

Dubbed “Dog Boy” by the media the boy was taken to hospital and then to a child care centre where he spent the rest of his childhood.

The deepest ancient ship wreck ever found

A deep sea salvage company searching for a missing submarine in 2001 discovered the deepest ancient ship wreck ever found two miles under the surface of the Mediterranean.

The 2,300-year-old shipwreck lying between the ancient trading centres of Rhodes and Alexandria challenged the long held theory that ancient sailors could not navigate on the open sea and instead hugged coastlines during voyages.

It seems likely the ship was a Greek trading vessel but its name is unknown.

Salvage experts looking for an Israeli submarine which disappeared 31 years before made the discovery using sonar and a remotely operated submersible.

The shape of several large oval shaped vases dated the find to the end of the third century BC. Experts believe the ship was similar in appearance to a fourth century BC Greek merchant ship.

Because of the great depth and cold some parts of the wreck are relatively well preserved.

Edinburgh’s Secret Vaults

In 2002 workmen digging up Edinburgh’s streets found the ground suddenly giving way beneath their feet.

A secret chamber which lay untouched for at least 300 years opened up before their eyes.

Archaeologists were called in to investigate the find in Old Fishmarket Close in the Old Town quarter of the city – the workmen had found another section of Edinburgh’s secret underground city – The Edinburgh Vaults.

The vaults date back to the 16th and 17th  century when Old Town Edinburgh became uninhabitable because of overcrowding and the New Town was built and two new bridges North Bridge and South Bridge were built to improve access.

The South Bridge had 19 arches and the land under it was made into large and small rooms – the Edinburgh Vaults.

But legend quickly grew up around the vaults – body snatchers kept corpses there before selling them to hospitals, it was said.

But the vaults were not waterproofed and only occupied by the poor. The city council filled them in, and sealed them off –including an entire underground street with shops – Mary King’s Close - and erased them from public record.

Two hundred years later they were rediscovered and they soon became a tourist attraction – with tourists often claiming they have seen a ghost in the vaults.

Stalin’s underwater villages

Seventy towns and villages were flooded on Stalin’s orders in the 1930s to create a huge hydroelectric power plant.

Some 130,000 people were relocated by Stalin’s secret police when dozens of villages and the historic town of Mologa disappeared under water.

A massive lake was created near the town of Ribinsk, 350 miles north east of Moscow, when two dams were built across the River Volga to provide extra power in the build up to WW2.

In some case houses were taken down brick by brick and rebuilt elsewhere. In other cases families refused to move and as many as 300 people died in the flood. Many protestors were dumped in a Gulag by Stalin.

Today there is plan drain the Ribinsk Reservoir and restore the churches and architecture of Mologa.

If the dams were opened it would allow the water levels to fall by four metres – enough for Mologa – the roof tops of which can still be seen during dry summers – to reappear. But so far nothing has been done to reclaim the lost town of Mologa and its villages.

Pipeline maintenance men

The thousands of miles of pressurised sea bed oil pipelines that cross the ocean floors need constant maintenance.

To do this two man dive teams will spend up to a month in a pressurised diving bell doing what is called saturation diving.

The bell is lowered to the ocean floor where the diver will venture outside to carry out maintenance work but on his return to the bell he will stay in his cocoon breathing a mixture of oxygen and helium making his voice sound like Donald Duck. All sense of taste is also lost while living under such conditions.

It is called saturation diving because the diver’s body becomes saturated with the gasses he is breathing. It allows him to work for much longer at great depths without getting “the bends” and avoids the constant need for decompression stops used in conventional diving.

The men get highly paid for this dangerous and unpleasant work – up to £3,700 per day – and their food and other supplies are sent in by the mother ship through a pressurised lock.

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