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Coober Pedy, Australia - This unique mining town in Outback South Australia is almost entirely underground, with tunnels leading to more than 1,500 homes, as well as hotels, museums, a church, a casino, a gift shop, and even a local pub.

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Coober Pedy, Australia - In addition to producing more than 80% of the world’s opals, the community is renowned for its dugouts, which were built to survive the scorching heat in the daytime.

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Republic of Molossia -

The smallest, self-proclaimed country in the world is located in Nevada, USA, and has its own president, flag, anthem, passport, and currency—printed on poker chips and relative to the price of cookie dough—as well as a lengthy history.

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Republic of Molossia -

His Excellency, Kevin Baugh, founder and president, calls his land taxes “foreign aid,” claims to have been at war with East Germany since 1983, and even gives tours of his tiny nation.

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Giethoorn, Netherlands - You won’t find roads in this serene village in the province of Overijssel. Instead, everyone travels by canals—even the postman—earning it the nickname "Little Venice."

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Giethoorn, Netherlands - Quiet and remote, their website says the loudest sound you can normally hear is the quacking of a duck.

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Greenbank, USA -

The Virginia town is the quietest in America and has laws against cell phones, Wi-Fi, stoplights, microwaves, spark-plugs, car radios, electronic doorbells, and essentially all the comforts of modern day technology.

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Greenbank, USA -

The reason, paradoxically, is because the town hosts some of the world’s most advanced technology, in the form of one of the world’s largest and most sensitive telescopes. Could you give up Wi-Fi in the search for alien life?

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Nagoro, Japan - When Tsukimi Ayano returned to her village to find that most of the residents had left, she chose to do something few others would: create life-size doll replacements for everyone.

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Nagoro, Japan - Each doll is placed specifically where she remembers them—working in a field, fishing in the river, sitting in a classroom—but to many outsiders, the effect is immensely creepy.

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Tangier, USA - This remote island 12 miles off of Virginia’s shore is already interesting in that there is no alcohol or phone service, and only one grocery store, two restaurants, one road, and golf carts as a means of transportation. But an even stranger fact is that the 460 residents speak in an old English accent.

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Tangier, USA - Being so isolated, Tangier has retained traditions and dialects from the early British settlers, giving the whole island the feel of a different era than the country it belongs to.

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Kihnu Island, Estonia - One of the world’s last matriarchal societies is situated on a little island in the Baltic Sea, where women are in charge of its 600 inhabitants and have been for centuries.

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Kihnu Island, Estonia -

The men on the island are largely fishermen who go out to sea for months at a time, leaving behind women who govern the island, protect tradition, and pass on the culture to children. And they do a fantastic job—Kihnu was recognized as a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003.

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Longest town name - A village on the island of Anglesey in Wales called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is, naturally, in the Guinness Book of Records for being the place with the longest name in Britain.

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Longest town name - The 58-letter name means "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the fierce whirlpool of St Tysilio of the red cave" in Welsh, but its 3,000 residents call it Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, for short.

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Shani Shingnapur, India - Imagine a place where homes have no front doors, no locks, no keys, and yet no one feels unsafe. What might seem like a dream is materialized in this village in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

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Shani Shingnapur, India -

Villagers believe deeply that Lord Shani, the god of Saturn and guardian of the village, will punish anyone attempting theft. Even the police station has no front door, and a bank has opened its first “lockless” branch in town.

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Hallstatt, China - When you go to China, the last thing you expect to see is traditional European architecture and historic churches that seem to date back hundreds of years. But that’s what you’ll find in Hallstatt, China: the world's first cloned village.

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Hallstatt, China - This perfect recreation of the Austrian town was spearheaded by a Chinese mining company who replicated homes, decorations, and even the church as part of a novelty high-end housing development. It’s not the first of China’s replicated wonders (i.e. Sphinx, the Eiffel Tower) but it’s the most impressive.

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Gross, USA - Sometimes called “the Nebraska ghost town that never died,” this once hopeful town’s population began to dwindle due to the lack of railroad and a couple of fires. Now the population of Gross is two. The remaining two residents, Mike and Mary Finnegan, own the Nebraska Inn, which apparently serves up some of the best burgers around!

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Monowi, USA - This neighboring Nebraska town seems uninteresting—dirt roads, prairie grasslands, an abandoned church, and one working tavern—but it has a recorded population of one!

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Monowi, USA - Eighty-four-year-old Elsie Eiler is the mayor, clerk, treasurer, librarian, and bartender. She pays taxes to herself, votes for herself, grants her own alcohol licence, and raises a few hundred dollars worth of taxes to keep the three lampposts flickering and the town’s water flowing.

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Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain - This town in the province of Cádiz grew out of a network of caves in the cliffs above the Rio Trejo, its bright white houses seeming to emerge from the rock face.

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Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain - Some homes even have rock roofs and olive groves right above them. Their wine, chorizo, pastries, and fresh produce reinvent the phrase cave-dwelling.

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Centralia, USA - This old Pennsylvania mining town has been on fire for 56 years, and is predicted to burn 250 more. Just 10 residents, including the mayor, were last recorded in 2016, holding on despite the fact that their zip code was removed.

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Centralia, USA -

The ghost town’s eerily empty streets, broken fences, dead patches of grass, and steaming holes in the ground—big enough to swallow cars— are the result of a honeycomb of underlying coal accidentally set ablaze in 1962. 

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Santa Cruz del Islote, Colombia -

Often called the world’s most crowded island, this dot of land has just over two acres, along with 1,200 residents and no running water, sewer system, police, hospital, or electricity.

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Santa Cruz del Islote, Colombia - Though it’s four times as dense as Manhattan—imagine 40,417 people to one square kilometer—the reason this island is so compelling as compared to more densely populated islands, like Îlet à Brouée in Haiti with 500 people on less than an acre, is that there’s also reportedly no crime, violence, or prejudice.

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Kamikatsu, Japan -

This small village nestled in the rice-paddies of southwestern Japan is leading the world in advanced environmental measures, nearing a completely zero-waste lifestyle—and it’s easier than you think.

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Kamikatsu, Japan -

Though it took time to get into the routine, residents now wash and sort their trash into 34 categories of waste and bring it to the town's sorting center. They also have a store where you can exchange unwanted items, as well as a factory where locals make products from discarded things.

See also: The most environmentally sustainable buildings in the world

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