In the desert of Mali, West Africa, we find the skull of an ex-cow, which was captured as part of the National Geographic Africa Megaflyover project. By the look of those horns, I’d say the skull probably once belonged to an N’dama, a species of cattle which is indigenous to this part of world.

Useless semi-related Wikipedia facts for the day:

The term ‘cattle’ isn’t a plural, but a mass noun, so you can refer to “some cattle”, but not “three cattle”. Rarely for the modern English language, there is no singular equivalent to “cattle” other than the various gender and age-specific terms - i.e. “a cow” actually only refers to an adult female who has had more than two calves.

Which explains why “the skull of an ex-cattle” didn’t sound right…

Thanks to Felippo and googleearthhacks.

Although the Soviet Buran space program only ever achieved in a single orbital flight, we’ve found a surprising number of space shuttles on Google Earth.

We started with images of a structural test shuttle and then the abandoned follow-up model and today we present the OK-GLI, an aero test model which completed 25 aero test flights and 9 taxi tests.

According to Wikipedia the OK-GLI’s post-Soviet life began with a stint as a museum in Sydney before being offered up for auction in Los Angeles and then finally ending up here in Bahrain, wasting away. A German company purchased the shuttle in 2005 but the legal wranglings mean it has yet to be transported away from this scrapyard.

Full list of Buran space vehicles on Wikipedia (Can you find any others?).

Thanks: Chilla

Google Earth satellite images have unearthed Samsung’s top secret development of the World’s largest Plasma Television.

After Japanese manufacturer Matsushita topped the South Korean electronics company’s 102″ plasma with a 103″ model Samsung moved developments to the African country of Algeria where Matsushita’s spies wouldn’t know what they were up to.

Rather than risking another embarrassment Samsung have gone all out and developed a 4,975″ Plasma screen. However, this may have been a mistake - the TV is so big that it keeps falling onto its back.

Also see previous oversized electronics on Google Sightseeing.

Thanks: SpiderX22

Deep in the Mojave desert, there’s some sort of aircraft which looks as if it crashed and was left to rot. So how did it come to be here?

There’s a military airfield to the east, Camp Wilson, so it’s possible the aircraft came from there - but why would they just leave it in the middle of the desert?

Of interest is that this location is very close to (that famed magnet of extra-terrestrial activity) Giant Rock. There’s even more airstrips just south east of the crash site at Outlying Field Seagle, where two of the strips are abandoned but apparently the third is still in operation. Most interestingly, the Xs at each end of the runway indicates that no-one should try to land here, as it’s used exclusively by unmanned aircraft…

Thanks to Shane McGillacutty.

On the roof of this farm building in Indiana, someone has painted a beautiful mural of a Happy Magic Rainbow Unicorn! Well, it could be of a My Little Rainbow Pony I suppose, but I’m inclined to guess that this is actually a real-life My Little Glue Factory…

Thanks to “Me”.

Here we see that someone has carved the word Lonsdale into the crops of a small field in the Dutch town of Veenendaal.

The name “Lonsdale” could refer to many things; towns, travel agents, accountants, or colleges - but probably the most widely recognised is Lonsdale clothing, a UK brand of sports and fashion wear, particularly aimed at the boxing market.

Sadly, Lonsdale the clothing company had nothing to do with this advert, as it was probably created by right-wing extremists - it seems that here in the Netherlands some of them have adopted Lonsdale branded clothing as their unofficial uniform. Allegedly a carefully placed jacket can leave only “NSDA” showing, which is one letter short of NSDAP, the German acronym for Hitler’s Nazi Party.

It’s comforting then that these particular small-minded idiots appear to be incapable of writing 8 simple letters without getting them upside-down and back-to-front

Thanks: Guardian, Berend & Frans Willemse

The state of Oregon has not just one, but two of the smallest municipal parks in the whole world.

The first, Waldo Park in Salem, is only 3.6 by 6 metres and only contains a plaque, and a giant sequoia. Yes, one of the world’s smallest parks contains an example of the largest type of tree on the face of the planet.

Mill Ends Park in nearby Portland is contained within a circle 61cm across, which sadly makes it almost completely invisible on the Google satellite shot (Look closely however, it’s situated right inbetween the two roads, and appears as a dark spot exactly in the centre of our thumbnail).

The park was created on St. Patrick’s Day 1948 (apparently to serve as “a colony for leprechauns and a location for snail races”), and despite the odds, in 1971 Mill Ends Park was officially recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s smallest park.

Further reading: The history of Waldo Park and Mill Ends Park at Wikipedia, and our post featuring The World’s Shortest River.

Thanks to John Riggs.

Watch out below! It looks like Thing (you know, the severed hand from the Addams Family) has grown thousands of times in size and is attacking New York City! Run for the hills! Aiiieeeeee!

Hang on, turns out that the monstrous hand is just décor for New York’s Madame Tussauds. Panic over.

Thanks: Mike Fraser