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crash in 1973 at the Paris Air show sealed the Konkordski’s fate and they served only 103 domestic flights before being withdrawn from service.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.

The Sunset Lake Floating Bridge in Brookfield, Vermont is actually a GSS first, as we’ve never featured a floating bridge before.

Built on floating logs all the way back in 1820, upgraded to tarred barrels in 1884, and plastic barrels in 1978, this is actually the seventh version of the bridge, which despite long periods of closure during its lifetime is today open for you to drive your car over if you’re in the area.

Bear in mind that you’re more than likely to get a little wet though, as the bridge was actually designed to be permanently semi-submerged…

You can read more about the bridge at Roadside America. Thanks to Jel.

High above the Uvas Reservoir in Santa Clara County, it looks like there’s hundreds of colourful balloons floating up into the sky.

The possible balloons are unfortunately on the overlap of two images, but appear to be rising up from the beach on the South-Eastern tip of the island.

Helium balloons can reach anywhere between 2000 and 6000 metres in height¹, but whether or not that would be high enough to make them so visible on a satellite photograph is unclear.

So it’s over to you readers: could this be a large balloon release captured from space?

Thanks: Vaudesir