Largest Burning Man festival

The annual Burning Man festival held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA, attracted a record 49,599 visitors to the 2008 event. The festival is named after the giant wooden effigy burnt during the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. In 2008, the Burning Man was also the largest since the event began in 1986, reaching an incredible 26 m (84 ft) into the sky.Organizers claim that the Burning Man Festival is the largest "leave no trace" event in the world, as participants return the site ­ a dry lake bed in the desert - to the condition in which they found it each year. According to organizers, the aim of the Burning Man Festival is "to guide, nurture and protect the more permanent community created by its culture... to generate society that connects each individual to his or her creative powers, to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society."