Next to Uluru are 36 are smaller monoliths known as Kata Tjuta (or ‘The Olgas’). The highest of the monoliths is Mount Olga which is 546 metres tall. Kata Tjuta used to be one gigantic monolith many times the size of Uluru but millions of years of erosion have reduced the single monolith to a series of smaller ones.

Thanks: jensflorian, gc & Nick Kemeny

A shopping centre in Malaga has ‘Plaza Mayor, Parque de Ocio’ written on the roof. Babelfish tells me this Spanish sentence translates to “Greater Seat Park of Leisure”, which doesn’t make much sense, but a more educated person tells me that a better translation would be “Main Square Leisure Park”.

That’s the translation problem solved, but why did they write the text upside down?

Thanks: LookingDown

This is a cracking shot of a plane coming into land at Haneda Airport (AKA Tokyo International Airport). By sheer passenger throughput, Haneda is the busiest airport in all of Asia and the fourth-busiest airport in the world, handling over 60 million passengers a year.

Thanks: Yoann & Temptationx.

This is the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. The Acroplois has an incredibly ancient history (described in some detail over at Wikipedia), but today it is best known for the most famous surviving building of Ancient Greece, the Parthenon (which is shown in our thumbnail). The Parthenon has stood here for nearly 2,500 years (Wikipedia page), and there’s lots of other ancient sights at here too, so here’s a map of the area in the the time of Socrates and Plato to compare with.

Here in Edinburgh we’ve got the National Monument, a copy of the Parthenon which was unfortunately never finished (supposedly due to a lack of funds), and is known locally as Edinburgh’s Disgrace (Wikipedia page). There’s no high-res of it yet, but I bet you’ll all be glad to hear that I can see it from my bedroom window

There’s another (way more impressive) copy in Centennial Park, Nashville, but again no high-res I’m afraid

Back to ancient Greece, and just east of the Acropolis you can still see the remaining columns of the Temple Of Olympian Zeus (Wikipedia page).

Thanks to… deep breath… Jean Lorraine, Chris Jernigan, Adam Parker, Bltiz, Matt, ray hollis, Martin Willey, Jim L., Ron Vogel, Roland, Stephen Train, Ruben Vermeersch, Salinga, Sig, Matt, GS, Evan O., Bennet Langlotz, Gut, Ellen van Swieten, Greg Askins, Ian, Ken Arnold, Feng Wu, banic, Boniface, martin e, Serge Lyubomudrov, noknok, Richard Cobbe, Scott Kleihege, Fai Sheng and cacafuego.

There’s some really cool Spiral artwork on a farmland near Snells Beach, New Zealand. The 80m wide artwork represents a Koru and is made of clay covered in grass. A recent New Zealand Herald article has more about the piece and how some Google Earth users tracked down the artist.

Thanks: woowoowoo & Croaky

Another new kind of image weirdness here, with this giant stripy blue square off the coast of Nova Scotia. Very odd.

Thanks: Ashley Bouchie

This is Venice of America, in California. Originally intended to be a copy of its namesake, the rapid development of the the motor-vehicle industry sadly meant that in 1929, barely 24 years since its inception, most of the canals were filled in.

Jumping all the way to the other side of the globe now (you lucky Google Earth people!), this is Gold Coast City, Australia. With more than 200km of waterways this looks like a cool place to live. The canal system is pretty huge, and as it was built in the 1960s, cars have been well catered for. Every house is beside a canal and a road. Google appears to have had a bit of an issue trying to match the whole thing up though!

Thanks to Miku Araman and Sean.

Here’s a whole bunch of Chinook helicopters at Hunter Army Air Field just outside of Savannah, Georgia. The CH-47 Chinook has been flying since 1961 and its twin contra-rotating rotors and twin engines allow for massive lifting power (over 12,000 kilos) and speeds of up to 183 mph (Wikipedia entry).