Judging by the tracks left by this car on a baseball field, it would seem that Washington D.C.’s youth like to liven up their evenings with a spot of light joyriding.

Actually on closer inspection it would appear that after performing a large number of doughnuts, these joyriders have (as is traditional), set this car on fire and buggered off sharpish.

Thanks to Frank at the GEarth Blog, via DCist.com.

Near the Oregon border, just inside Washington state, there’s a small aircraft at a very odd angle. Given that we can clearly see its undercarriage, it would seem likely that this aircraft is right in the middle of a loop the loop!

The distortion of the plane is probably due to it being near the edge of an individual photo (where the images are warped to merge them together smoothly), but no amount of distortion could reveal its underside…

Thanks to Eduardo Sao Clemente and Eric.

Since 1925, the Goodyear Blimp has been an integral part of American sports culture, probably more famous than the tyre company whose logo is along the side.

Goodyear have built more than 300 blimps over the years and today there are three which officially share the “Goodyear blimp” name.

The “Spirit of America” has been California’s blimp since 2002 and has a full-time crew of 18, which covers pilots, engineers, cameramen, etc.

The ‘Spirit of Innovation‘, seen here flying over its hometown of Pompano Beach, Florida, was named last year in a web-based public poll (and that was the best they could come up with?).

The third of the fleet, ‘Spirit of Goodyear’ sadly can’t be seen on Google Earth as yet. However, worldwide there’s at least another 3 blimps with the Goodyear emblem.

In Brazil, flying over the city of Sao Paulo, is ‘Spirit of the Americas‘.

And roaming around Europe somewhere are two blimps, both called “Spirit of Europe“. Here’s one of them, parked in a English airbase.

On a slightly related note, can you guess which company produces the most tyres annually. Goodyear? Michelin? Pirelli? All wrong: the correct answer is LEGO, who produce 306 million tiny tyres each year

More Goodyear blimp info on the Official Website, Wikipedia and MyAirship.com

Thanks: JosieNorden and Virtual Globetrotting.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, San Diego needed a fast and reliable rail connection with the east to maintain growth and prosperity. Due to the hostile desert mountains it needed to negotiate on its way to Los Angeles eastward, the planned connection became known as ‘The Impossible Railroad’.

It took the construction of 17 tunnels and 20 trestles to complete the most mountainous eleven-mile stretch, but the link was finally completed in 1919. However, when an earthquake destroyed one of the tunnels in 1932, the engineers were forced to chose an alternate route - which involved building The Goat Canyon Trestle.

The trestle is an absolutely spectacular structure over 600 feet long and 180 feet high, which is described as the longest curved wooden trestle in the world.¹

Apparently this route was closed in 1976 after extremely heavy rain, but recently reopened for freight. In fact if you follow the tracks far enough south/west, you’ll pass lots of different tunnels, several smaller trestles, and you’ll eventually come across a train.

See also: Our post about The High Level Bridge, and a more complete history of the Goat Canyon Trestle.

Thanks to James.

In 1997, due to vast overcrowding of the UK’s prisons, the HMP Weare was moored at a disused Royal Navy dockyard in Dorest and converted into a prison ship.

The ship had started life as a troop ship during the Falklands war. She was then sold onto America before being brought back across the Atlantic to serve as a prison. Weare hit the headlines in 2003 when an inmate somehow escaped, and then again in 2005 when it was shut down due to the poor conditions.

She’s now been sold onto a Nigerian shipping company, who plan to re-task Weare as accommodation for its oil workers. It was reported that many of the prisoners had little or no access to fresh air, so I’m not sure the oil workers will be very happy about their new home!

More info from the BBC and Wikipedia.

Thanks: Gearthhacks.

It looks like there’s a massive toxic bug in Yorkshire! Run for the hills!

On closer inspection I’d say that a massive toxic bug has been squashed on Yorkshire. Come back from the hills and help clean this mess up.

A previous bug in Google Earth was swiftly fixed by the development team. Perhaps I should file a bug report?

Thanks: Ben

Near the top of Italy’s heel, there’s a mysterious-looking structure - an absolutely huge circle, 4 kilometres across! You might guess that this is a particle accelerator, but in fact it’s a perfectly circular high-speed test track - The Nardò Ring.

The ring is 12.5 km in circumference (around 7.8 miles) and is banked all the way round to allow the cars to achieve their absolute maximum top speed; which in practice means that a driver often need not turn the wheel at all once they get going. Essentially, cars can drive in a continuous straight line and yet somehow always end up exactly where they started…

The official site and the Wikipedia page are a little lacking, but see our other post about the Super Secret Volkswagen Test Track if you found this interesting.

Thanks to Ben, Luca D, munehiro, wanten, Luca, Rob James, woowoowoo, Craig, Dave, nixx, Alice Rizzoli, Mark, Francesco, Patrick and finally Tom!

Here in sunny Cornwall, England, is an absolutely fanastic-looking environmental complex - The Eden Project.

Built inside an old china clay quarry, the complex includes two sets of giant interconnected transparent domes made of ETFE cushions¹ (each emulating a natural biome), that house plant species from around the world. The larger of the two biodomes emulates a tropical environment, and is 55 metres high, 100 metres wide, 200 metres long, and covers 3.9 acres - which makes it the largest greenhouse in the world!

Not intended as a theme park, the Eden Project instead aims to highlight today’s major environmental issues, and they set a good environmental example too - the project’s energy all comes from local wind turbines, their litter is all recycled, and the massive quantity of water they use (to create the humid conditions of the Tropical Biome), is all collected rain water.

There’s actually a concert stage here (which doesn’t seem to have been built yet in these images), which was the location of the “Africa Calling” part of the worldwide Live 8 concerts of 2005, and the biodomes also feature in the 2002 James Bond movie, Die Another Day.

You can read more about The Eden Project at Wikipedia, visit the offical site, or to see more biodomes, see our older posts on Île Sainte-Hélène, a Geodesic Dome and Biosphere 2.

Thanks to Tom and Anthony Houghton.