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PHOTOS: When Barn-Sized Boulder Meets Barn, Barn Loses

First things first: No one was hurt.

Now, with that out of the way, we have to confess to being amazed by some photos from northern Italy — where a huge boulder broke free earlier this month, rolled down a mountain and turned a barn into splinters as it narrowly missed a farmhouse.

As other views show, a second boulder also came down the mountain that day. Fortunately, it came to rest just short of the home.

You can see in additional images that this isn't the first time a block as big as a barn has rolled down from above in Ronchi di Termeno.

Rock slides, of course, are nothing to joke about. In December, a couple in Rockville, Utah, were killed when a boulder smashed their home. In October, five hikers died near Buena Vista, Colo., when a "cascade of boulders" came across the trail they were on.

Update at 6:45 a.m. ET, Feb. 1. Video:

Many thanks to reader "parsnip," who shared a link in the comments thread to an equally amazing video that Italy's Tareom newssite produced, apparently using a camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle to show the scene.

Another recent post that's proved popular among those who enjoy unusual images:

This Photo Of Lake Michigan Will Make You Shiver

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.