After the North Sea flood of 1953 destroyed 4,500 buildings, drowned 10,000 animals and killed 1,835 people, the Netherlands began work on the world’s largest flood protection project, Delta Works (Dutch: Deltawerken). Today Delta Works consists of over 16,500 kilometres of dams, 300 structures and 1,650 sq. km. of reclaimed land (Wikipedia page).

Here’s a couple of the more interesting highlights of Delta Works, but there’s a map of all the dams on the official site which you can use to identify all the others if you like.

Oosterscheldekering

Oosterscheldekering (Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier) is the largest and most expensive of all the projects which make up Delta Works. Constructed using custom designed and built ships, this 9 kilometre dam is the world’s largest movable flood barrier, took 10 years to finish and has since been declared one of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers (Wikipedia page).

Maeslantkering

The Maeslantkering (Maeslant Barrier) (previous featured here in minature form) is designed to protect Rotterdam’s harbour, and had to be retractable to allow shipping to take place unimpeded. If a 3 metre wave is approaching, the enormous arms swing in to meet in the middle (after 4 hours warning). Which might seem excessive until you discover that either arm would be as high as the Eiffel Tower if stood on end, and that they each weigh 4 times more than the Paris monument (Wikipedia page).

Thanks to Bruce, nixx, RB, kipz0r and Sven van Heel.

The Cambodian ruins of Angkor, the capital of the Khmer civilization, consists of 72 major temples and other buildings from the 9th to 15th Centuries in an area about 15 miles across. The dense forest around the ruins shows how the city was lost for centuries until a French explorer rediscovered Angkor in 1860.

The southernmost temple is Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure in the world, a giant temple surrounded by a 570 ft wide moat. The west-facing temple comprises of three levels with the uppermost level originally being open to only the priests and king.

Browse around for more of the spectacular temples, and drop by the comprehensive Wikipedia page.

Thanks: Joseph Pantoga, Dave, Juha Ylitalo, Freddie, Dekdoi Bondoi, Matt Ebb, mindflux, rahul, Rob, babs, visnu pitiyanuvath, Arrianus, Debi K, Edward S, Datamorgana, Glenn, Glenn, Tim, Mark, Phil, Stephanie, Edward, Ethan Fugate, Simone, Glenn, Scott Rhoades & Me!

Off the Map Ships Early

Amazon.com have sneakily begun shipping the US version of our book, Off the Map – The Most Amazing Sights on Earth as Seen by Satellite a week before the official release date of November 1st. There’s not much info on the Amazon page so far, but we’ve provided some better info, a quick background on the authors (complete with picture!), and also some sample pages on the Google Sightseeing Book Page.

The UK version, Not in the Guide Book – The wackiest sights in Google Earth, as seen by googlesightseeing.com is still set for release on November 9th 2006. Again, see the Book Page for more information.

Party!

We’ve booked a venue for the Book launch party on November 10th, and we’d love to meet any of you who happen to be in the Edinburgh area that night! Just get in touch and we’ll send you an invite.

Fix, Feature

We recently fixed a long-standing bug of which we were unaware, that prevented some people behind proxies (AOL users for example) from being able to visit the map page or view Google Earth links. If this has affected you then please accept our apologies, and give it another go!

If ever you do encounter errors or misbehaviors on this site, then we’d love to hear from you – either via a comment on any post, through the contact form, or email james @ the domain of this site – we’ll always try to get bugs ironed out as soon as we can.

Lastly, a new feature: You can now view sights posted in a comment directly in Google Earth! Click on “Google maps link” in a comment, and then choose “View in Google Earth” in the sidebar of the map page.

To follow-up from the Copper Mining earlier in the week, we head over to the German coal mining town of Bottrop, where there’s lots of industrial stuff going on.

But if you’re more of an art person, on a nearby disused slag heap we find ‘Tetraeder Bottrop‘, a giant big Tetrahedron artwork-thingy by Wolfgang Christ. 230 tonnes of steel went to make what is basically large viewing platform, 60m tall on a 90m heap.

Thanks: Bilbo

Oh dear, it appears that some tardy time-travellers aboard these planes at Peoria Airport have been eaten by The Langoliers!

(Although the movie was actually filmed at Bangor International Airport, I understand that no airport escapes the all-consuming wrath of the Langoliers. So that must be what we’re looking at.)

Thanks to Lrae.