Tarbela Dam, found on the Indus River in Northern Pakistan, is the largest earth-filled dam in the world.

The dam was completed in 1976 as the result of a water-rights agreement between India and Pakistan. It is 143m high and almost 3km wide, for a total volume of 106million cubic metres of rocks and earth, making it one of the world’s largest man-made structures.

It holds back a reservoir almost 100km long, though the capacity of the lake has been reduced by silt deposits, just one of many problems encountered by the dam’s builders and operators.

The water is vital to irrigation for farms in the area and power stations at the dam provide a significant portion of Pakistan’s hydro-electric power (caution, vibrant text and background colour!)

Zooming in shows us that it also makes the perfect backdrop for a large religious pronouncement, with Arabic and English text from the Koran reading And HE hath made the rivers for service unto you.

Thanks to Rashid and Syed for pointing us to the first Google Sightseeing entry from Pakistan. This was also our first ‘large type’ from the Koran, though we have had advice to read the Bible and of course, many dams.

Yesterday, Google announced that they had added some extra cities to Street View, including Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; and Charleston, South Carolina.

What’s even more interesting though, is that this update includes a lot of the places in-between places – highways coast-to-coast are now on Street View, and the coverage in the US has actually been doubled.

This means that some of Google Sightseeing’s previously posted sights, like The Devil’s Tower are now visible in Street View for the first time.

While the update includes places in Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota, a full list of the updates hasn’t yet been compiled as far as I can tell.¹

With all this new coverage, perhaps you’ll be the person to stumble across the next street fight, house on fire, or epic bike-related fail – so get submitting your street view discoveries now!

The Waldspirale, in Darmstadt, Germany, which at first glance from above may appear to be a park, is actually an apartment building that reaches twelve floors at its highest point.

The fascinating building was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian architect and painter, between 1998 and 2000. Unfortunately, he died shortly before it was completed. Going with Hundertwasser’s personal style, the building contains Russian onion domes and few straight lines¹. The roof of the building is a green roof, planted with beech, maple, and lime trees.

The building has 105 apartments, as well as a cafe and a bar at the top of the spiral. Uniquely, the building has over 1000 windows of which no two are the same.

Flickr has many ground level photos of the Waldspirale.

Continuing our exploration of World’s Largest trivia – in Cleveland, Ohio we find the World’s Largest Rubber Stamp.

The Free Stamp – a pop art sculpture created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen quickly became the centre of controversy. It was originally commissioned by Standard Oil of Ohio, but an ownership change and fears of a public backlash in an economically struggling city meant construction was halted. The components were kept in storage for a number of years.

It was finally put on public display in Willard Park in the early 1990s, when BP America agreed to donate it to the city but pay for the maintenance. The stamp is 8m tall and almost 15m long, its bulk clearly apparent on Street View.

Unfortunately, it appears that the current economic climate has also had an impact on the location.

Now if only we can track down the world’s largest inkpad …

Thanks to Rich Holmes and Keith.

Google Sightseeing has previously featured a number of works by the same artist: Saw, Sawing, Dropped Cone, and Spoonbridge and Cherry.

With this week’s launch of Street View for New Zealand we thought it was time for a quick roundup of the best Street View sights we’ve posted on our Twitter page over the past week. We’ve found several things to see in New Zealand so far:

• The world’s largest Kiwi fruit is in New Zealand of course.

• Middle Earth’s Mount Doom (aka New Zealand’s Mount Ngauruhoe)

• Could this be the world’s largest dog and sheep?

• Looking into the crater of Mt Eden, Auckland.
• From our previous post on Zorbing in NZ, here’s some zorbuses on top of the hill:

Whilst elsewhere in the world we’ve seen:

• The Castlemaine XXXX Factory from the label is now on street view
• It’s alright mate, nobody’s watching you painting that wall
• Jimi Hendrix rocks Seattle
• After a slow morning taking pictures of Florida, the Google Driver skives off
• A caged Polar Bear on the streets of France
• The World’s largest baseball bat outside the Louisville Slugger Museum
• And finally, have you ever wondered what happens when the Street View car gets rained on? Well now you know!

If you’d like more sights like this, then subscribe to our twitter feed!