Free UK daily paper The Metro published an article last week about a YouTube video¹ in which someone claimed to have found the shape of Jesus in a cloud, floating over Mount Sinai in Egypt.

We thought this was such a blatant (and totally lame) rip-off of our own Face of Jesus Found in Sand Dune that we’d better up the ante!²

First in Utah, we find a terrifying looking skull face…

Then in Nevada, we’ve got a Blues Brothers style one-eyed alien…

And finally in Kenya we’ve got… the Rock Eater Biter from the NeverEnding Story!

How long before the Metro steals this story I wonder?

See our other related posts for even more Google Earth Pareidolia:

• Irish Rock Face
• Face of Santa Claus
• Native American Listening to an iPod
• The Face of Mother Earth
• The Simian Messiah
• Face of Jesus Found in Sand Dune

Thanks to Jayden Brown, Vaughn Nelson and cruzito.

“Area 5″ is part of the Nevada Test Site where, along with other more famous areas, America has for decades tested various underground nukes, bombs and maybe even alien spacecraft.

A large part of Area 5 is used as storage for radioactive waste and what we see here is deep trenches dug in the sand. These trenches are then filled with large containers of radioactive waste and covered over.

Some of this radioactive material can be pretty nasty and the worst of it is known as “Transuranic Waste” which, according to Wikipedia, means

Waste containing more then 100 nanocuries of alpha-emitting transuranic isotopes per gram of waste with half-lives greater than 20 years.

More information on Area 5 and the Nevada Test Site.

Thanks: rotenman

It seems that more than one person has had the idea of theming their swimming pool around aeroplanes…

Here’s a small private plane-shaped pool in Miami.

This is the Flying W Airport in New Jersey, where they have a cool plane-shaped pool with “W”s on the wings. Flying W is described as a “flying airport resort“, and whilst I’m not sure exactly what that is, there’s definitely real planes parked right next to the pool. Very odd.

Over in Cairo, Egypt, they’ve taken a quite different approach and illustrated a fighter jet on the bottom of this circular pool, which also features a very large bird of prey. Do these insignia hold some sort of significance I wonder?

Finally, in China, they’ve dispensed with swimming pools, a built an entire lake in the shape of a plane! This is right next to a decent sized airport, so maybe this is a hotel.

Whilst swimming here might not be very pleasant, if you look closely you’ll see that instead, you might be able to take a boat trip in this plane!

Thanks to 93f2, Felippo, Majoska and kjfitz.

At first glance this might appear to be a a blurry cloud above the ocean but it is in fact hundreds of seabirds feeding on fish!

News of the feast has spread fast, and you can see more birds approaching from all directions.

If you zoom out it looks like there’s the trail of a ship which has just moved off the image to the South-west, so it’s likely that this frenzy has been caused by fishermen discarding leftover fish. According to Wikipedia this is how some seabird populations get 70% of their total food intake!

Thanks: benomir

Astute readers will point out that we’ve already had part four of the famous series “Keeping up with the Joneses“, but I’m going back to trampolines for the missing part - get ready for the stupidly titled Keeping Up With The Joneses Part 3 and a half!

First, some history: set in the massive 45 km² private gardens, Eaton Hall has been home to the Grosvenor family since the 15th century and in this time has served as a War hospital twice and had its fair share of being demolished and then re-built.

In 1874 Queen Victoria created the title “The Duke of Westminster” for Eaton Halls owner, Hugh Grosvenor who, thanks to inherited property in central London, was the richest man in Britain.

These days the Duke title is held by Gerald Grosvenor, who also previously held the “Richest” title but in recent years has slipped to No. 5. However, the Duke has managed to cling onto the title of Richest Man in Britain (who was born in Britain).

Of course, even billionaires have to keep up with the Joneses, and the Duke of Westminster is no exception; outside the back of the stately home there is a large blue trampoline, just like those found throughout the rest of the UK!

Don’t forget that he’s rich though, the Duke has 2 trampolines!

The full 2007 rich list will be published this Sunday.

Thanks: Mrb

This is the 30-metre wide satellite dish of the Jamesburg Earth Station. Originally built in 1968 to support the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Earth Station was shut down in 2002 and put up for sale.

It was subsequently bought by a group of Ham-radio geeks, who spent several months restoring it - and in February they actually got it working, bouncing 20 radio signals off the moon.

There’s a great ground-level shot at the official site, and it was Aviation Week that published the original story.

Thanks to jher via Boing Boing.

We previously featured the dying Aral Sea back in January 2006, but since then much of the area has been updated with high resolution satellite imagery. Which means we can now see several ships, abandoned in the middle of a desert, a bit like the one in Close Encounters.

Read our original article for an explanation why these ships are here, and for links to other things to see in the area.

Thanks to Gyorgy Takacs.

In 2001 the Radisson Hotels & Resorts chain built a huge ship next to one of their hotels in Kuwait, and they called it the Al-Hashemi-II. They issued a press release at the time, claiming that at 83.7 metres long, the Al-Hashemi-II was now officially the World’s Largest Wooden Ship, and had duly been entered in the Guinness Book of World Records.

However, things are never that simple in the world of Google Sightseeing!

So what’s the problem? Well, I checked my copy of the Guinness Book of World Records (you really need one to write for this site), and guess what? There is no entry for “World’s Largest Wooden Ship”!

The ship’s website has a picture of an official looking Guinness World Record certificate, but I have doubts about the credibility of this evidence.

Firstly, the ship’s length is stated on that certificate as 80.4 metres — 3.3 metres less than the press release. Of course, it is entirely possible that the CNN transcript of the press release was in error here. However, the “official” certificate even has an obvious typo — “owners ofRadisson”.

If you look closely you’ll see that the certificate also has an odd disclaimer on the bottom:

But before you get too excited, I’m afraid that all Guinness certificates have that very disclaimer.

But the most damning evidence against the claim that this is the “World’s Largest Wooden Ship” is the indisputable truth that ships are built for the sea, and this “ship” was actually designed and built to be a museum and restaurant. It has never, and will never set sail.

Fully disqualifying the Al-Hashemi-II I worked my way through Wikipedia’s “List of world’s largest wooden ships“, and the first decent candidate for the title is actually the recently constructed 65 metre long SV Tenacious, which has the distinction of being the World’s Largest Wooden Ship Still Afloat.

Unfortunately, being it a working ship, I have no idea where to find it in Google Earth…

Thanks to Virtual Globetrotting.