Woohoo! It’s Friday! A fact which doesn’t appear to have escaped this guy etched onto a mountainside in Mongolia - he’s clearly doing a Friday dance of joy!

Thanks to Kerry and anarster

Thanks to the power of Google Earth and the internet the US Navy have decided to spend as much as $600,000 on major alterations to a perfectly good barracks. The reason for the spend is that, when viewed on Google Earth, the building complex resembles a swastika.

The four unconnected buildings are part of the Coronado Naval Amphibious Base and were built in 1967. The Navy have stated that they did notice the shape during construction, but decided that no-one would ever see it from above so there was no point in wasting the money starting again with a new design.

Of course in the 60s no-one ever thought that Google Earth would ever exist. After the shape was initially spotted back in 2005, all the crazy internet theorists have created elaborate stories of how the barracks were in fact designed by evil Nazis.

According to these stories, the Nazis managed to infiltrate the US Navy to execute their cunning plan for a Swastika building layout, with other aeroplane-shaped buildings “pointing at it”. This design would then deliver their message of hate across the globe, just as soon as someone bothered to invent the internet, Google and then Google Earth…

Of course, that’s all nonsense; in reality it’s just some buildings with an unfortunate layout. The US Navy probably have better things to be spending their money on, but the internet hordes have spoken so the barracks must be changed, whatever the cost.

Thanks to the LA Times via js and many others.

Update: Apparently the link to LA Times is demanding a login from most people, which is very annoying. Try Google News instead.

Germany has an extensive canal system, made up in part by the Mittellandkanal (Midland Canal), which helps form an important industrial shipping route from the west of the country, all the way to Poland.

In Minden the Mittellandkanal engages in this verging-on-the-ridiculously-complex aquatic interchange where the canal crosses the Weser River. There’s usually a 13 metre height difference between the river and the canal, so locks like this one (ground level photo) are needed to get vessels up and down.

To the east, the Mittellandkanal crosses a small river and a road in Hanover, primarily to pass right by this Volkswagen factory to the north.

Further east at Magdeburg the Rothensee boat lift (ground level photo) was originally intended as a minor connection between the Mittellandkanal and the River Elbe, with an aquaduct and another boat lift forming a connection with the Elbe-Havel Canal.

Due to WWII however, the rest of the project was never completed, and for 60 years the Rothensee lift instead lowered all the aquatic traffic from the West German industrial centres onto the Elbe on their way to West Berlin.

In 2003, a proper connection to the Elbe-Havel Canal was finally completed, putting an end to the traditional 12 km detour. The 918 metre long Magdeburg Water Bridge is the longest aqueduct in Europe, and as you can see in this photo, it’s absolutely enormous! 690 metres of the bridge are over land, and the waterway it carries is 34 metres wide and 4.25 metres deep.

You can read more about the Mittellandkanal, the Rothensee boat lift and the Magdeburg Water Bridge at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Nick and Glenn.

Currently in the international spotlight is Burma’s Insein Prison where the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is believed to be held.

The jail is pronounced as “Insane Prison”, which seems to be an appropriate name due to the inhumane conditions and torture tactics.

More on the prison and the ongoing protests in Burma from the BBC.

I think no-one can doubt that aliens have definitely landed!

Both of these spacecraft are located in farmland outside the Romanian city of Timisoara. Romania is not known as a major UFO hotspot, but to our alien overlords Roswell is probably passé¹.

That said, this isn’t the first sighting of our visitors to Romania: the Romanian UFO Network² have hundreds of blurry pictures of similar looking craft (or clouds).

So, UFO sceptics, do you have another explanation of what we’re seeing here?

Thanks to tomhet4ever, DocMartini & kjfitz.

This is the absolutely fantastic Rainbow Bridge that crosses Tokyo bay, Tokyo. A 570 metre-long suspension bridge, it has two decks that carry three transportation lines - the Shuto Expressway on the top, and on the bottom, Route 357 and the New Transit Yurikamome.

The Yurikamome is actually an automated guideway transit service, which looks like a monorail, but the carriages run on rubber wheels instead. It’s a fully automated system with no drivers, which carries 100,000 passengers a day to the artificial island of Odaiba. The system has become a tourist attraction in its own right, thanks mainly to the spectacular 270-degree loop which the Rainbow bridge has to make to get the Yurikamome up from ground level. Here’s a recent ground level shot of the loop.

See also our related posts on The Lotus Bridge, a Curly Bridge Over the Seto Inland Sea, Odaiba’s Ferris Wheels, and Utah’s Rainbow Bridge (which actually features in our book too!).

As always, you can read more about Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge at Wikipedia. Thanks to Bill Kendrick, Terry Foster, Christian Willman, and anyone else who submitted this since I earmarked it for posting… 14 months ago!

The Tupolev Tu-144 is a supersonic passenger jet built by the Soviet Union as a competitor to the British/French Concorde.

The Tupolev was developed around the same time as Concorde and, with a little help from a spy in France, its appearance is very similar. Due to this, the Western papers of the day gave it the inspired nickname of “Konkordski”¹.

Konkordski 77107 on display at Kazan Aviation Production Complex

Like its namesake, Konkordski wasn’t the aviation success everyone had hoped for, and only 17 were ever built. A disastrous crash in 1973 at the Paris Air show sealed the Konkordski’s fate and they served only 103 domestic flights before being withdrawn from service.

Konkordski 77108 stored at the Samara-Ouchebny Research Institute

Although nowhere near as famous as Concorde, Konkordski did achieve its share of records: it was the first supersonic passenger jet to fly (just 2 months before Concorde) and to this day is still the fastest commercial airliner ever!

More info on the History of Konkordski, full aircraft list and Wikipedia page.

Thanks to Snoogans and Virtual Globetrotting.

Avast Ye! Today, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day an’ we’ve got a barrel-load of piratey-themed sights fer ye landlubbers!

Las Vegas’ Treasure Island be havin’ a daily pirate battle, ‘ere the swashbucklers by defeated by th’ booty-shaking o’ “the sirens o’ ti”. Not yer usual kind o’ booty neither!

Them “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie-films wi’ buccaneer Johnny Depp, they be based on a children’s ride! Those children orta be workin’ the sail and swabbin’ the decks! Arrr!

There be a swashbuckling ship maze on the Isle of Wight! Shiver Me Timbers!

This even be a plane in middle o’ Santa Cruz, ‘ere they be callin’ it ‘Th’ Pirate Plane’! Flyin’ Pirates? Whaterenext!

Be seein’ you also The Pirate Skull of Vegas.

Thanks to these scurvy dogs: Juan Manuel Gil, bruv, Virtual Globetrotting and Munden.