Until recently only visible in Google Earth, Maps users too can now see this super-cool sequence of aeroplane shadows above Germany’s largest airport, Frankfurt International.

The first one is the best I think, but it’s great how the shadow from the plane (which has been captured multiple times) fades out as the aircraft climbs higher.

Weirdly, just the first shadow has had its plane erased by the image-blending process, while the second, third and fourth planes can still be seen.

Much of Germany is now covered in excellent high-resolution imagery, so I’m sure we’ll have lots more good German sightings!

Thanks to Dominik Freitag, Sven Becker, Martin, Philipp Frey, Urs, Giovanni, andr3as and XF.

Yes, you heard me right – that’s the world’s largest cotton swab!

(Of course, this is actually a member of the South American Cotton Ball Army in disguise).

Thanks to me & Kyle French.

Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Facist Dictator during World War II, gave himself the title of “Il Duce”, or “Dux” in latin, which translates to “leader”. Around this time one of his followers planted trees in the hills, about 75km from Rome, proclaiming “DUX” for all to see.

Apparently locals in the 50s tried to erase the letters by planting more trees around the area but clearly that wasn’t very successful, and the 600 foot propaganda still stands.

Thanks: Aldo

This is a nice high res shot of a plane over autumnal suburbia in Illinois. I can’t seem to find the shadow of this one on the ground, but is must be pretty high to appear so big.

Sarah says:

This is a great pic of an airplane, cruising approximately above our house in Palatine, IL.

I’m guessing that you went looking for your house and found this great big plane over the top of it

Thanks: Sarah Lopez

Well we’ve already featured an astronomically correct copy and a reconstruction in the medium of fridges. But we can now see the actual Bronze Age megalithic monument, Stonehenge.

Stonehenge has an incredible 5,000-year history that I won’t even attempt to summarise here, as the theories surrounding it are as varied and complex as its history is long. However, the most commonly discussed aspect of this legendary monument is probably how it was built, and Wikipedia has some interesting figures which put the whole thing into perspective:

Estimates of the manpower needed to build Stonehenge put the total effort involved at millions of hours of work. The first stage probably needed around 11,000 man-hours (or 460 man-days) of work, Stage 2 around 360,000 (15,000 man-days or 41 years) and the various parts of the third stage may have involved up to 1.75 million hours (73 000 days or 200 years) of work. The working of the stones is estimated to have required around 20 million hours (830 000 days or 2300 years) of work using the primitive tools available at the time.

If you’re interested, then I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page on Stonehenge, and if you already know all of that, then check out the page of Stonehenge replicas instead!

Thanks to Tim, Jim Geurts, Dave Edmunds and Kelly.