Places That Are Famous for the Strangest Reasons

From a distance, it looks like a battleship, which is how Hashima Island got its nickname, Gunkanjima. For nearly a century, this small island off the coast of Nagasaki was a bustling undersea coal mining operation. It was once one of the most densely populated places on earth, a maze of concrete apartment blocks. When the mine closed in 1974, everyone left. Now it’s a spooky, crumbling ghost island, a concrete ruin battered by the sea, famous as a villain’s lair in the James Bond movie Skyfall (2012).