The recently announced Google Maps imagery updates are now online!

These new images once again bring Google Maps up to date with the images available in Google Earth, where the new imagery was added a couple of weeks ago. The Google Earth Blog has some details of what was added.

So, get submitting those new sights!

This is… er, the Integratron! What is it? Why, it’s an “acoustically perfect tabernacle and energy machine sited on a powerful geomagnetic vortex in the magical Mojave Desert” of course!

Okaaaay. Apparently the guy that built it claimed he was inspired by a predawn meeting with a visitor from Venus named Solgonda. Obviously.

Read the full story at the LA Times for much more bizarre ufology, or visit the official site if you dare!

Update: kjfitz pointed us towards the great birds-eye view of the Integratron in WLL (Safari users note that WLL still doesn’t work in your browser though I’m afraid).

Thanks to jher via boing boing.

Today is the Queen’s 80th Birthday (her actual birthday, as opposed to her official birthday), which is being celebrated at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England. It is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation – there’s been a functioning castle here since around 1070.

Besides a giant Royal Standard flag being raised over Windsor Castle (presumably from the Round Tower?), today’s events include a 41-gun royal salute in Hyde Park, and an extended royal walkabout! Er, great. You can see lots of people hanging around in the castle, maybe hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen themselves I don’t doubt.

There’s a full history of the castle at Wikipedia, and also a page explaining why the Queen gets two birthdays…

As an aside, Jonathan Rawle says:

I noticed the new hi-res areas seem to be appearing on a county-by-county basis. You can clearly see the outline of West and South Yorkshire and Greater Manshester; Cambridgeshire; Berkshire; and south Wales minus Monmouthshire. So if you’re looking for something in those areas, you’re guaranteed a good shot!

Thanks to Tom, Tim and Jonathan Rawle.

The Statue of Liberty was, as we all know, donated to America by the country of France and stands as a welcome to all returning Americans, visitors, and immigrants. She stands at just 151 feet tall and as everyone says looks really small in real life.

There’s smaller scale copies of Ms. Liberty all over the place including France’s very own copy which stands facing West to her larger sister.

The suburb of Mountain Brook, Alabama has a 1/5 size Statue of Liberty, whose flame is actually lit with Alabama natural gas.

And there’s a copy of everything in Las Vegas, so of course they’ve got a 1/2 size Liberty Statue outside the New York, New York Casino.

More replicas, and a long list of movie appearances on Wikipedia.

The Cardington Airship Hangers were originally built to house the R101 airship which was intended to be used to ferry cargo and passengers from the UK to India in the 1930s. These airships, as you can tell from the size of the hangers were huge, over 700ft long. Unfortunately on its maiden voyage the airship crashed into a hillside near Beauvais, north of Paris. The crash ignited the hydrogen gas bag and fire quickly engulfed the entire airship. This spelled the end of the British attempt to create lighter-than-air aircraft and the R101’s competitor, the R100, was scrapped despite a safe trans-atlantic trial flight.

The South hanger is now owned by Airship Technologies, who are trying to revive the airship business. The North hanger is used as a super big sound stage for films. Most of the outdoor Gotham Cty scenes for Batman Begins were filmed inside the hanger, aswell as several recent James Bond films.

Thanks: Loz