Archive for December 7th, 2007

Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Even more puerile artwork

Friday, 7th December 2007 by James

When we first saw this sports field of a Pennsylvania high school, we reacted with “Oh, great, another crudely drawn willy, are there really no original field graffitti artists anymore?”

willyfield.jpg

Unable to say anything worthwhile, we forgot about this sight and relegated it to the slow news day pile.

However, today we’ve been swamped with emails suggesting the sight, so we’re posting it now purely because we really don’t want to see it ever again.

Please, stop suggesting we look at this penis. We can’t take it anymore.1

Many thanks to Tom, Steve, J Brett, Rich, Guido, H Dog, Mike and many, many others for thinking of us :D


  1. If you’ve enjoyed this sight, then you’ll definitely enjoy the mildly NSFW Rudeness category

The Ghost Plane of Mokpo

Friday, 7th December 2007 by James

In the city of Mokpo, South Korea we can see a very mysterious aircraft, which cannot possibly be in flight or parked where it appears to be!

Look closely at the shadows of the plane and surrounding buildings, and you’ll agree that the plane must be very near to the ground. So near in fact that it couldn’t be airborne1, as it would have already collided into one of the tall surrounding buildings.

So then the only conclusion is that the plane must be resting on the buildings, right? Well, this plane is likely to be an Airbus A3002 (a passenger jet which carries around 300 people), and even completely empty it would weigh almost 82,000kg - which is rather a lot of weight for a building to support. And how would it have come to be there anyway?

Reader Graham, who spotted this sight, was kind enough to actually visit the area in question to see if the plane was still there, and how on earth it was being supported. Unfortunately a thorough search of the area proved fruitless, as there was “no sign of anything that could even remotely resemble an aircraft of that size”.

Finally, to add to the intrigue, why does the right wing appear to blend into the background of the satellite image?

Many thanks to Graham!


  1. For more aircraft in flight see Cyclonic’s All aircraft in flight placemark

  2. With thanks to Cyclonic again for the In flight aircraft ID charts