Novaya Zemlya (“New Land”) is a large Russian landmass located at the northeasternmost extreme of Europe. The rugged Arctic islands have one of the most severe climates on Earth and were also home to over 220 nuclear tests between 1955 and 1990.

Since 1871, the city of Kimberley in the Northern Cape has been at the centre of the diamond-mining industry in South Africa. The city instantly grew around the burgeoning mines, eventually surrounding many of the giant pits dug into the ground, which have become tourist attractions in their own right.

First used in 1926, le Circuit de Reims-Gueux was a French Formula One and sports car racing circuit built on the public roads between the villages of Gueux and Thillois. The circuit hosted its first French Grand Prix in 1932 and continued to hold the event until 1966. The track closed for good in 1972, but the roads are still in place, and many traces of the old circuit can still be found, including the pit stalls, paddock, and spectator bleachers.

North Korea Uncovered was a massive collaborative effort between 2007 and 2009 to map out the reclusive country using Google Earth imagery. The project reveals thousands of landmarks across North Korea – everything from military bases to amusement parks, restaurants to statues, agriculture to gulags. It’s impossible to cover everything in this post, but here’s just a sliver of what the project revealed.

Stanley Park is the centrepiece attraction of the city of Vancouver, receiving eight million visitors each year. At exactly 1,001 acres, it is ten percent larger than New York’s Central Park. A mix of natural and man-made landscapes, the park is renowned for its temperate rainforest setting on a peninsula that juts into the Strait of Georgia.

As we around the world continue to acquire automobiles at a precipitous rate, we also have to build increasingly complex intersections to deal with the resulting traffic. Few places epitomise this movement more than the the massive, five-level High Five Interchange in Dallas, Texas, one of the most impossibly complex highway junctions you will ever see.