UNITED ARAB REPUBLIC: World's Biggest Sinkhole

Next to the Great Nile itself, Egypt's most awesome geographical feature is the Qattara Depression. Shaped like some splayfooted giant's footprint, this enormous sinkhole in the desert west of Cairo begins with a heel 35 miles south of the Mediterranean shore and then runs southward into the desert for some 185 miles. Covered with rock salt and slimy quicksand, Qattara is as desolate and lifeless as anything this side of the moon. Only generals have ever placed any value on one of nature's worst mistakes. In World War II Montgomery bunched his...