12.5 metres (41 feet) in length, hyperspace capable, and with a top speed of 5,025 mph in atmosphere, the X-wing is of course the iconic starfighter first seen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, all the way back in ‘77.

Although why the Rebel Alliance have left this one smack bang in the middle of Disneyland Paris is a complete mystery…

More on the X-wing at Wikipedia. Thanks to virtualglobetrotting.

Continuing the never-ending stream of “World’s largest…” we present The World’s Largest Portrait, which adorns the hills of Erzincan in Turkey.

The massive 7.5 square km painting is of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkey until his death in 1938. Despite his passing some time ago, Atatürk’s face is still a very popular image and is featured on banknotes, public buildings, schools, and (in this case) mountains.

The image was painted in 1982 by the order of the then-ruling military junta and it took 3000 soldiers just under a month to finish their handiwork.

Over the years the Turkish army have continued to write on the country’s hills, more recently writing one of Ataturk’s favourite sayings: “Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene!“.

With the second largest standing armed force in NATO (after the much larger USA), perhaps the soldiers have spare time on their hands?

Previously: Portraits Paintings in Google Earth.

Thanks to ssaatci and baharbahar

(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir – which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.