Belgian news last week picked up the story of a fountain in Maasmechelen which, after sitting happily in front of City Hall since 1979, will now be torn down and rebuilt. The reason for this change is the recent Google Earth discovery that when viewed from a satellite the fountain is in the shape of a Swastika.

Apparently the fountain’s designer always knew it was a Swastika, an ancient symbol of the Sun god which the Nazis tarnished. But the mayor cried “Tear it down!” and it will be rebuilt in the less offensive shape of a shamrock.

Thanks: jaques, fievel & Brecht

Lots of the DigitalGlobe satellite photos around the world have small lens flares like this one in Reykjavik which appear to be simply the sun reflecting off a shiny surface - no big deal there.

But reader Andrew Grannis brought our attention to this example of one such flare in Cincinnati, which is much larger than any other examples we’ve seen. If this is the result of a reflective object on the ground then it would have to be the size of a field. Any suggestions?

Thanks: Andrew Grannis

Check out this fantastic curly bridge, which connects mainland Honshū to one of the tiny islands of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. It looks a bit like a tiny Lotus Bridge, but instead of allowing traffic to swap sides of the road, I believe this one is designed to join the higher mainland with the lower down island.

The Iguazu Falls are situated on the border of Argentina and Brazil, who both claim the falls as one of their top tourist destinations. In peak flow the water has a massive surface area of 1.3 million square feet, split over about 270 separate falls.

Iguazu Falls are wider in area than the Niagara or Victoria falls and despite being reportedly more spectacular than both have failed to achieve as much fame. When the First Lady Mrs. Roosevelt saw Iguazu Falls she exclaimed “Poor Niagara”, yet to be honest I hadn’t heard about Iguazu until about 10 minutes ago. Still, I’ve learned my lesson now and read the Wikipedia page.

Thanks: PZ, Doug Olson, Vinicius Lage, Zara, Román Gorojovsky, Michael Walter & Spamboy

This feels a little like ambulance chasing, so in no particular order, here are 9 (possible) traffic accidents.

1. Highway A13 just north of Rotterdam (there’s a couple of vehicles on the hard shoulder, and traffic is backed up for a long way):

2. Belfast Spillage (first pointed out in a different thread, there seems to be some sort of spillage and water vehicles cleaning it up):

3. Traffic backed up in Moscow (definitely something holding up traffic, but it’s unclear that this is an accident):

4. Blue vs. red car in the UK (my vote is for parked cars in this case actually):

5. Central reservation crossed in Australia (there seems to be a lorry in between the carriages and a couple of emergency vehicles to one side):

6. Road rage in Las Vegas (impossible to say how these cars came to rest like this, but there’s definitely people having words in the street!):

7. Dallas Motorway accident (there’s a car on the hard shoulder, traffic creeping past, a truck on the hard shoulder facing the wrong direction, and a couple of unidentified black marks on the road):

8. Burning car, Germany (Car is still on fire and is surrounded by firemen, there’s water staining the motorway, a fire engine and hundreds of backed up vehicles to the north):

9. Jackknifed lorry, Dallas (Dallas again? Lorry appears to have jackknifed across the highway, but it seems traffic is getting past):

We sincerely hope that nobody was seriously injured in any of these incidents.

Thanks to Dirk Thiel, WRA, Wilfred van Breda, gIMpSTa, Matthew Flynn, Ant, Stephan Segraves and Dan.

This has got to be the world’s largest can of 7 Up, and even better - it’s actually full of 246,051 litres (65,000 gallons) of 7 Up!

(OK that’s not entirely true. The 19 metre can is actually a water tower, but the water which passes through it really does get turned into 7 Up.)

7 Up was launched in 1929 named “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda”, which was caramel coloured and contained lithium citrate, a mood-stabilizing drug. They changed the name almost immediately, but the psychiatric medicine stayed in until 1950.

More info at Roadside America and Wikipedia.

The Kawarau River and Bridge in New Zealand both have notable claims to fame.

The river, which runs between Lake Wakatipu and Lake Dunstan, played its part in the Lord of the Rings films as Middle Earth’s Great River Anduin.

The Bridge, 43m above the river, was the site of the world’s first commercial bungee jumping when way back in 1988 a Mr A J Hackett thought that people might actually pay him to jump off a bridge. Here’s a Youtube I found of someone doing just that.

Thanks: Talullah

For some unknown reason somebody is carving giant letters ‘HA’ into a sand bar near Abu Dhabi. The 500m tall water letters are very neat but it’s a lot of effort just to laugh into space.

Perhaps it’s just the beginning of a longer word? HARRY? HASTA LA VISTA? HALP (sic)?

Thanks: Heather Muise