We had so many submissions for the Mall of America we had to post it back in May last year. So here is our revenge in the form of the Google Sightseeing team’s local “shopping centre”, The Gyle. It actually looks kinda cool from above.

Thanks Matthew Pettitt

At the point where Lake Geneva empties into the Rhone River, you can hardly miss the spectacular Jet d’Eau - a 140 metre jet of water, and officially the world’s largest fountain. Two groups of pumps spray an astonishing 500 litres of water per second into the air at 200 km/h - meaning that at any given time there’s about 2,000 litres of water in the air! You can see just how huge it is in this view from Cathedrale St. Pierre on Wikipedia

Yet another ‘world’s largest’! Will they ever end?

Thanks: Allan, Maite Elguero

North Korea’s former dictator, Kim Il-Sung (Kim Jong-Il’s father) is held in very high esteem, as shown by this absolutely gigantic bronze statue of the “Eternal Leader” who died in 1994.

This ground level photo should give you an idea of the sheer scale of the monument, where couples visit to lay a wreath just before they get married.

Thanks: eRez

The Al-Askari shrine in Samarra, Iraq was one of the holiest sites for Shia Muslims.

Sadly this distinctive gold dome was destroyed last week by bombers hoping to escalate tension in the area (BBC News Report).

Thanks: Tom & Adam

Bennie was a fifty-foot tall, 15,000 pound brachiosaur with a shady past, who used to watch over the I-680 highway from this vantage point in Benicia, CA.

Before moving here Bennie used to live on the I-80 in Dixon, CA where he was originally installed, although without the necessary permits. In this past life Bennie was also a female dinosaur by the name of Dixie and at that time had a dinosaur egg at her feet. While in both locations Dixie/Bennie promoted cigarette smoking as the property of “Cigarettes Cheaper!”, a now defunct chain of shops.

Dixie became Bennie back in 1998 when the gas station she was standing in front of was sold and the owners wanted their $150,000 dinosaur back. The move happened early in the morning when she was airlifted by helicopter to the company headquarters in Benica. Fossilfreak has some bizarre photos of the event.

With the collapse of the company sometime in 2005 Bennie was dismantled and offered for sale on eBay, although no-one could afford the reserve. Rumour has it that Bennie now lives in the garden of a former employee somewhere in the Suisun area north of Benicia. Maybe we’ll be able to find him again on the next image update?

Thanks: Alexey N. Solofnenko

This is the striking (and huge) Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. It’s a 330-metre-tall pyramid-shaped building with 3,000 rooms, and was supposed to have 7 revolving restaurants, except they never actually finished it. Wikipedia says:

newspapers estimated the cost of construction was $750 million - 2% of North Korea’s GDP - and it is generally assumed construction came to a halt in 1992 due to lack of funding, acute electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine.

The building itself is complete, however it has no windows, fixtures or fittings - which makes it officially the world’s Tallest Unoccupied Building! In fact, it’s the tallest building by far in North Korea, the 18th tallest building in the entire world, and if it were ever to be completed, would be the world’s tallest hotel. Here’s a picture which really gives you a great impression of scale.

Thanks to Keith T, Soren Ragsdale, Josh Weinberg, zmaster and Jon Gaspar.

In our never-ending quest to catalogue everything that stakes its claim to being the “world’s largest something” I present to you the world’s largest dry dock.

Located in Belfast’s Docklands (where the ill-fated RMS Titanic was built) the dry dock is part of the Harland & Wolff Shipyard who also operate the two gigantic yellow cranes, Samson & Goliath. UK readers might recognise the area from a BBC ident that showed skateboarders doing tricks underneath the cranes.

To the west is the ferry terminal where you can see a Stenna Line Ferry which operates between here and Stranraer in Scotland. Submitter Chris had this to say:

This ferry is possibly the Stena Caledonia which crosses in 3 hours 15 minutes. The newer high speed Stena Voyager (HSS) also travels this route taking 105 minutes for the trip.

Thanks: redstar1 & Chris

G J Oliver’s Industrial Steel factory has a collection of unusual pets in the back garden; giant Steel Dinosaurs. Under the order of Mr Oliver himself the prehistoric creatures are created in spare moments by company employee Woody Hauser, who bases the design on rubber dinosaurs provided by his boss.

So far the collection is made up of a T-Rex to the East, a Apatosaurus (the correct name for what we like to call Brontosauruses) to the West and between them, just a little to the North, a caveman. (These ground level photos also show a Triceratops somewhere in the area, but I can’t spot it in the satellite pic).

The models take about 6-9 months each to design and build yet Mr. Hauser is expecting to continue production for as long as there’s slow days at work.

Thanks: Alex