Well not so in the Spanish city of Malaga. Here once a year a huge a costume-filled procession winds its way through the streets where dozens of shadowy Ku Klux Klan-type figures (all pardoned ex-convicts) wind their way through town carrying a huge statue of Christ and the Madonna while the lucky penitent,  leads the parade, incognito.

Killers, thugs, and other kinds of, now pardoned, criminals make up the body of the parade. The people never know which crime each of them committed. Everyone is there to be forgiven by the power of Christ and the Virgin Mary, thanks to the age-old tradition of the Holy Week Pardon.

And in Italy the town of Gubbio comes alive once a year with a hair-raising race! Gubbio, it is said, is the most suicide-prone town in Italy. Since the Middle Ages it's been called the Town of Lunatics. Seeing this race, called the Candles of Gubbio, one can understand why! Seriously though, the race consists of 3 large teams of men, representing, corporations, peasants and guilds, holding aloft three 5-metre wooden octagonal totems atop which sits the figurine of a Saint. First Saint through the doors of the Basilica up the hill is declared the Saint of the Year. You have to see it to believe it. And yes, accidents DO happen.

Global Village also showed us that all children do not aspire to be footballers or pop stars. In Argentina the majority of children, as young as seven, want to dance the tango and emulate Carlos Gardel the man who sang the first tango and seared his name forever into the soul of Argentina. Gardel is a national hero there as Napoleon was in France.

In India, on the other hand, some youngsters lead lives which children elsewhere in the world could only dream of! Imagine living the life of a young warrior 24 hours a day? Some parents happily give up one son to an adult Nighang warrior who then teaches him to be an excellent horseman, swordsman and all-round warrior according to the Sikh Nihang tradition as well as looking after the boy's spiritual education until he reaches adulthood.

And as for monumental achievements it was hard to go past the next two stories. The biggest and the best doesn't always come form the United States, well almost…

To commemorate the defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad, present day Volgograd, the Soviets built the biggest statue in history. Standing 52 metres high, The Call of the Mother Country is represented by a woman holding a sword high above her head. America's Statue of Liberty is 46 metres high by comparison. 

And for sheer audacity and bravado you have to tip your hat to one single American of Polish extraction, Korczak Ziolkowski. He was invited by chief Standing Bear of the Sioux People to sculpt a monument to the Indians. A whole mountain was to be stripped bare and the likeness of Chief Crazy Horse on horseback carved into it. When it's completed the sculpture will totally dwarf the famous presidential heads on Mount Rushmore. To date only the head has been completed as the full completion is dependent on public donations. It receives no government funds.