The World's Biggest and Most Expensive Yacht

Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich rose from obscurity and successfully navigated the shady world of early Russian privatization to become one of the world's wealthiest self-made billionaires. His 40-man private army of security personnel make him one of the best-protected businessmen in the world, and when his private gigayacht the Eclipse is handed over in time for Christmas this year, it will be the largest (at a staggering 560ft) and the most expensive (at US$1.2 billion) private yacht the world has ever seen. Security will be as tight as you'd expect, with missile defence and intruder detection systems—but the Eclipse's most notable feature is a privacy system that can detect the digital cameras of snooping paparazzi and blind them with laser bursts, ruining spy photos.

The Eclipse is absolutely ginormous—at 560ft (170m) long, it makes minnows of Wally's Floating Island, Paul Allen's Octopus and every other monster yacht in the world. And while owner Roman Abramovich has lost an estimated 3 billion UK pounds in the current financial crisis, word is that he's still sparing no expense on his biggest and best toy yet.