SPACE GRAFFITI

Forget Banksy, 63-year-old billionaire sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan has gone big. Visible from space… big. Scrawled on his private island Al Futaisi in Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates, HAMAD measures 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) in height and 3.2 KM (2 miles) in width. The letters are dug so deep that they form an artificial waterway when filled with seawater. As a member of the ruling family of the oil-rich nation, Hamad is used to living it large. He built a pyramid to house 200 of his personal cars. He also built the world’s largest truck, large enough to build four bedrooms in the cabin. Oh yes, and he has a motor home shaped like the Earth, exactly one-millionth the size… of the Earth. Needless to say, Hamad didn’t dig this latest extravagance by himself with a bucket and spade. He had some help from a team of his workmen who took weeks to complete the endeavor. There’s no word on how much it cost to dig. You can see “HAMAD” yourself by typing the coordinates “24.3442, 54.3255″ into Google Earth or Google Maps. Alongside his lavish displays of wealth he has become a well-known philanthropist in medicine and supplied a complete kidney stone operating theatre to a public hospital in Morocco where he continues to fund its staff.