This post was updated 29th July 2007

On the 19th of June 2005, a Mahfooz Aviation Boeing 707-347C crashed while landing at Addis Ababa-Bole Airport in Ethiopia. Luckily all 5 crew survived, but the aircraft was written off.

Although I could be wrong (hey, it’s happened before), I believe that this Google Earth satellite photo shows the wreckage of that exact crashed plane!

So, what’s my proof? Firstly, the original Google Earth satellite photo was dated as November 2005 and the June crash is the only Addis Ababa-Bole Airport incident listed on the Aviation Safety Network for the whole of 2005.

For further proof I measured the wingspan of the crashed plane using the Google Earth ruler, and it more or less matches the 44.42 m wingspan of a 707-320B.

In December 2006 we took the following screenshot from Google Earth, which showed the plane’s fuselage as little more than a pile of rubble.

The next screenshot was taken in July 2007 when Google Earth’s imagery for the region had been updated.

This shows the fuselage of the plane complete, with the tail section broken off and lying to the side. There is clearly a path of debris leading off the runway, confirming the crash was a runway mishap.

I would guess that the Google Earth image “update” was actually a regression in time, and the second photo shows the plane before it had been dismantled (probably to clear it away).

This is the centre of Parcelforce Worldwide’s UK operations, their International Hub beside Coventry Airport, England.

Why would I link to the Parcelforce International hub? Well, apart from being one of the largest buildings in the UK, as I write this post, this is the current location of my brand new Nintendo Wii!

So good luck to all of you who’ve ordered a Wii from Amazon, as yours is probably in this warehouse too… Here’s hoping you’ll all get them first thing tomorrow! Worringly, in my case it does seem to have a rather long way to come…

We recently had a request to find the Neighbours set, and we always like to keep our readers happy, so here is the real Ramsay Street.

If you view in ‘Hybrid’ mode you might accuse my of telling fibs, as this cul-de-sac’s real name is “Pinoak Court”. In the soap it’s called Ramsay Street after the Ramsay family who used to live there.

Wikipedia for Ramsay St.

We might as well make a worldwide soaps tour out of it, so let’s head by the small town that was built for the abysmal failure of a soap called “Eldorado”.

Broadcast by the BBC in 1992-93 it was supposed to be a cross between Eastenders and Neighbours but achieved the success of neither and was swiftly cancelled. I wonder what goes on there now?

Wikipedia for Eldorado.

Set in the fictional West Yorkshire village, Emmerdale is another popular UK soap which is actually filmed near Harrogate in the grounds of Harewood House.

Wikipedia for Emmerdale.

Previously featured: Coronation St & Eastenders

Thanks: John Seddon, Martyn Webster & Bruv

Here in Portugal there’s a forest fire burning through the landscape (Portugal’s been hit hard by these fires in recent years), but there seems to be a little more to this particular plume of smoke…

Does that not look like a bearded face at this distance? In fact (maybe I’m just getting carried away in the spirit of the season), but I think that looks quite a lot like Santa Claus!

Thanks to Ricardo Castro.

JP found this little building on a seemingly un-inhabited tiny island off Macau. Written on the roof is some Chinese characters and the word “ZAO” – secret lair perhaps?

A bit of investigation let me to this KML file which is a collection of all the VOR and NDBs in the DAFIF database… Um, yeah.

It turns out that the this is the Zao VOR, a VHF Omni-directional Radio Range, which is a worldwide navigation system for aircraft. It broadcasts a radio signal which allows the pilot to calculate exactly where he or she is. This is all explained in great detail on the Wikipedia page.

Thanks: JP