Connecting the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen is the Great Belt Fixed Link, another example of a confusing bridge / tunnel mash-up¹.

Starting on Funen at the Western end we have a 6611m bridge that carries both road and rail.

This bridge then abruptly ends at the tiny island of Sprogø, the site of a former prison used for women deemed “pathologically promiscuous”! During the bridge’s construction Sprogø’s landmass was quadrupled in size.

Here the road and rail tracks diverge, with the rail track diving under a tunnel to the North, while the road continues along the 6790m Eastern bridge.

This Eastern bridge has a single suspended span (without ground support) of 1624m, making it the second longest suspended span in the world. It would actually have been the title holder, at least temporarily, but for a delay in construction which meant that the longer-spanned Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge was completed first.

Prior to the construction of both the Great Belt and Akashi-Kaikyo bridges, the longest span title was held by the Humber Bridge in England, wich reigned from its construction in 1981 until 1998.

Everyone’s favourite Humber fact is that the perfectly vertical towers are actually 36mm² further apart at the top than they are at the bottom, due to the curvature of the earth!

Wikipedia has the complete list of largest suspension bridges and pages on the Great Belt, Sprogø and the Humber Bridge.

Thanks to Jonathan Rawle, Tobias Hader and Cyan

Well it’s been a while since we had a real Friday mystery!

So, who can tell us why this group of people seems to have randomly formed a circle in the middle of the road in downtown Las Vegas?

Thanks to Claude Warren.

For those of you not familiar with cult 1990s children’s television, Teletubbies was a program primarily aimed at 1-4 year olds which followed the life of four colourful characters, notable for their camp outfits and love of Tubby custard. The Teletubbies (Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po) eventually became a worldwide success amongst children and ‘grown-ups’ alike, lasting 365 episodes before filming finally ended in 2001.

Their unique domed house in Tellytubbyland was actually in the middle of farmland in Warwickshire, England. The dome was 16 feet high – big enough to accomodate the Tellytubbies themselves, who ranged in height from 6ft 6in up to 10 feet tall. To help make the characters appear less enormous, the rabbits used in the programme were actually Flemish Giants – which can grow to over 20lbs!

Sadly, the shame must have been too much to bear for the landowner, as this more recent Microsoft Live Map shows that he has since converted this fascinating historical site into a small lake instead.

Here’s a great article about the filming location.

Thanks: Cookie Monster, Greg M and Jasmine.

When I was younger, it was always one of my favourite ‘facts’ that “millions of years ago crocodiles and alligators were, like, hundreds of feet long”. Of course it’s difficult to argue with a statement this naïve, but we do know that the biological order of large reptiles known as Crocodilia has remained pretty much unchanged for a staggering 84 million years.¹

Imagine my joy then, when I learned of a 200 foot-long gator in Florida! Imagine too, how my joy turned so quickly to disappointment when I saw the low-resolution shots that cover the Jungle Adventures alligator farm. They’re so poor that I can’t even spot a 200 foot-long alligator!

This got me thinking however… “What was the largest alligator in the world before this elusive specimen?” The answer of course, is the world’s second largest gator! What a beaut, eh?

Miraculously also in Florida, at Jungleland, this 126 foot-long monster has an evil glint in its eyes, and is so big it could easily eat cars like biscuits! Wait a minute… it IS eating a car! Yes, it’s chowing down on a safari jeep like it was a [Graham Cracker/Tim Tam/Hob-Nob]!²

All of which makes me rather glad that crocs and gators aren’t any bigger than they already are.

Thanks to Kurt Leucht and Felippo. Read more about the world’s largest gators at Roadside America.

In 1962, a landfill site in Centralia, Pennsylvania was set on fire. The rubbish was located in the pit of an abandoned strip mine, and although it was believed to have been extinguished at the time, the fire actually remained burning in the lower depths and eventually spread to an eight-mile seam of coal, where it has now been burning for 46 years.

Initial attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It soon became apparent that carbon monoxide produced by the blaze was having adverse effects upon the health of the locals, but it wasn’t until 1979 that people became aware of the scale of the problem:

a gas-station owner inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 77.8°C (172°F).

A couple of years later a 12-year-old boy fell into a 45 metre-deep sinkhole that suddenly opened beneath his feet, and people began to leave this place in earnest. Centralia’s population dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to just 9 in 2007. Today, all buildings within the borough have been condemned (you can see in the satellite shots that there are hardly any left now), and the few that remain lost their ZIP codes back in 2002.

To the south we can see a section of Pennsylvania Route 61 which had to be abandoned when, despite repeated repairs, huge smoking cracks kept appearing in the highway. We can see in Google’s imagery that today the road is becoming overgrown with plant-life, and yet the cracks in the earth still belch toxic smoke into the air here every day.

In 1994, this section of Route 61 was permanently closed, and we can easily see the road block which is used to direct traffic along Byrnesville Road instead.

As you read this post the underground fire continues to burn, and it is now estimated to underlie around 160 hectares (400 acres) of land.

Furthermore, it seems that this fire will continue to burn for some time to come; there are no current plans to extinguish it and the eight-mile coal seam constitutes enough fuel to last about 250 years.

Read more about Centralia at Wikipedia, explore a photo gallery of the area, or see some before and after shots of a previously inhabited area.

Thanks to George Dorn, greg, David, Rich Holmes, Sensei Sparky and Lars Christensen.