This weekend, I was lucky enough to see the only flying Avro Vulcan in existence, yet Murphy’s Law dictated that my camera should under no circumstances work. So, whilst this post was to be interjected with marvelous self-made photography, it will instead attempt to use the imagery that Google provides.

Thankfully, you have been gamely notifying us of all the Vulcans you could find, and we have built up quite a collection. There are currently less than 20 survivors, mostly in the UK.

Firstly, at Southend Airport, the Avro XL426 was the 44th of the 88 delta-wing bombers that were built, and this one entered service in August, 1962.

Since 1986, this model has been taken under the wing of the Vulcan Restoration Trust, who dutifully care for the old bird, and occasionally taxi her up and down the runway to stretch her legs. According to submitter Mark, the best view is to be had from the train line that runs right beside the airport.

The XM603 sits rather forlorn at Woodford Airfield, near Manchester, the once gleaming paint tinting to a lifeless green hune.

Information on this one seems difficult to come by, but message board chatter from 2006 suggested that the relic was to be broken down to parts. In fact, her death only served to make others stronger, including the XH558! This photograph shows her final resting place.

Once the United Kingdom’s main deterrant against Cold War threat, armed with nuclear and, presumably, nerve pinch weaponry, the XL391 stands guard at Blackpool airport¹.

It was bought in 2004 on eBay for £15,102, but when the buyer realised he would have to pay another £20,000 to move it anywhere, they abandoned it where it was, sniff, scrapped in 2006.

If you live in the United States, there is one at Castle Air Museum in California, a roofed one at the Air and Space Museum in Nebraska² and finally one snuggled up next to a B-52 at Barksdale AFB, which also shows just how deceptively huge they are:

If you want to see the Vulcan flying, and happen to live near an airshow, there’s still a chance this year!

Thanks: Eddy Rhead, Adam Sadler, Steve Wrona, Tim and Mark

The town of Brummen in The Netherlands is perhaps the last place you would expect to find a secret government conspiracy in action, but any other explanation would be naïve: Google have obviously been forced to disguise the structure with the help of the clone tool, and the repeated use of a beige trees produces some rather amateur results:

However, when you look at it in the rival Live Maps service, you can see nothing amiss, apart from a half constructed golf course to the side – not the most secretive fortification in my eyes. When compared side by side, the woods seem to be wider and there is definitely a suspicious change in water colour:

In reality, the most plausible suggestion would appear to be an humble technician trying to clear up a mess left by an imagery artifact or cloud, but my gut knows that it is something to do with the renegade Staten-Generaal. The bloggers over at ‘Stinky Journalism‘ (seriously) have been to Google about this, and apparently they are investigating the anomaly.

We’re aware that there seems to be an anomaly in our imagery and are working to determine what happened.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Google has taken part in a bit of photoshop trickery, as we saw last year when they put on a sham aerial display.

Thanks: PhotoshopDisasters and StinkyJournalism.org

The Vitruvian Man (Wikipedia) was drawn around 1487 by Leonardo Da Vinci, and has since become not only the most famous of Da Vinci’s works, but also one of the most famous images ever created. The drawing depicts a male nude in two superimposed positions within a square and a circle – the archetypal ‘perfect man’. Da Vinci was a talented anatomical artist, and was apparently rather partial to regularly cutting up corpses to help hone his skills.

In fact the Vitruvian Man is more than just a pretty picture – it’s also an extremely clever mathematical triumph, as it correctly relates the man’s proportions to historic measurements, such as the foot (six of which add up to his height), the cubit, hand and fathom. The complexity of the design will forever ensure that no overly-ambitious artist attempts to re-create it on Google Earth using the medium of “crop maze”.

Oh. Damn.

To give them their due credit, the people responsible for this German crop maze have done a pretty amazeing job – although, putting my ruler and pedantry skills into action showed that the “square” is more like 80 x 83m… and the circle is a bit wobbly compared to the original… but the positioning of the navel exactly in the centre is impressive!

This is actually the 2001 version of the town’s annual hemp labyrinth tradition, which in the past has seen a particularly spectacular map of Europe, a portrait of Albert Einstein and a tribute to the 2004 Athens Olympics. You can see aerial photos of them all at the maze’s website.

Thanks to godlike.

Google is in trouble. The company now has so much money that it’s finding it increasing hard to spend it all – so as a first step has decided to employ a 2 car convoy to capture Street View images!

This means that we get a nice close up of the camera that is used, but strangely it doesn’t appear to be the same as the ones that have been caught elsewhere in either Paris or London.

As has been widely rumoured, it’s possible that this second car is separately collecting 3D imagery using a special laser camera (which bounces off nearby objects to create a 3D map, onto which the street view imagery can be laid).

The two cars rather quickly split up though, so they were probably just setting off from the same place. Of course, there’s always the possibility that new 720° imagery is just round the corner!

Thanks to streetviewfun.

High above the skyline of the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, this incomplete tower stands testament to what can be achieved with an amazing vision and poor financial planning.

At 220 metres, it is only half of its planned height of 400 metres, which would have made it one of the tallest towers in the world. It was also planned to include a revolving restaurant – something to rival the 540 metre high Ostankino Tower in Moscow.

Although construction began in 1983, by the end of the decade it had ground to a halt, much to the dismay of investors, but to the infinite joy of thrill seeking base jumpers¹, made easier by the lattice-work of metal to climb inside. By 2000, the number of people tragically dying from the tower forced the authorities to weld the doors shut.

Today it remains, rather eerily over the city, as these photos show.

Thanks to Rudi.