This is Chicago’s Midway Airport and yes, at the end of all the criss-crossing runways, and surrounding it on every side are houses. Midway is smack-bang in the middle of a residential area.

Fortunately the airport has these tiny little buffers in place, presumably to stop any plane that might overshoot the runway from ploughing headlong into the junction on the other side of the fence. Scary stuff.

These images were taken around 5 years ago, whilst the airport was being completely rebuilt (without ever closing), and you can clearly see where the old terminal building (with the black roof) has been partially torn down.

Just to the east of the new terminal building you can see the then brand-new multi-storey car park (which has some really cool exterior circular ramps joining the levels together), and slightly further east again is the Chicago Transit Authority’s Orange Line train yard. Speaking of trains, there’s also several other enormous trainyards in the area.

Thanks to Peter, Steve, Scott Steg and Cory.

The New Bridge, formerly the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) Bridge, is the world’s seventh largest suspension bridge and was declared the construction of the 20th century in Slovakia. The globe at the south side provides all the support for the bridge, so it does not require a pylon in the Danube. Here’s a ground level shot.

Built between 1967 and 1972 the upper deck was inaccessible in the Communist era as, at 95 metres above ground, it gave great views of capitalist Austria. These days you can visit either the observation deck, the ‘UFO Taste’ restaurant or ‘UFO Groove’, a “stylish nightclub” (apparently).

Thanks: Andrej Kvasnica, Jan Koubek

BASF is a German chemical company with plants throughout Europe, Japan and the United States. Approximately 250 employees work at BASF’s Beaumont, Texas site which has this huge piece of Large type on the roof of one of the buildings. To avoid the potential embarrassment of the text being upside-down (like Loyola University) they wrote it both ways up.

Thanks: Brian

Founded in 1755, Lomonosov Moscow State University is the oldest and largest university in Russia. The main building was built in 1953 and stands at 240 metres, making it… (can you see what’s coming yet?), the tallest educational establishment in the world.

This place is huge in every sense of the word. For starters, just look at the scale of the grounds, then consider that the university has over 50,000 students* and employs around 24,000 people** and finally… well, just look at it! It’s bloody enormous!

More info (as always) at Wikipedia, and there’s a tour with some fantastic images at the official site.

P.S. The Moscow State University tower is the tallest of a set of seven towers which Stalin had built in Moscow…

Note:
* Students are based at several different campuses
** Figure includes auxiliary staff

Thanks to Sergei Vavinov, Loc, PihTa and Matthew Kehrt.