Unless you’ve been living on the, er, Moon, you can hardly have failed to notice that today¹ marks the 40th anniversary of the historic landing of the Apollo 11 mission – during which, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to ever set foot on the Moon.

Apollo 11 was launched on a Saturn V rocket at 9:32 AM on July 16, 1969 from Launch Complex 39-A at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The same pad is also used for Space Shuttle launches, including the recent launch of Endeavour. Apparently, when a fully fuelled rocket is on the pad, the minimum safe distance for people is 5km! However, on the day that the Street View car visited it did get close enough to get a distant view of the launch tower rising above the swampland.

At the nearby Kennedy Space Center we can see a replica Space Shuttle, as well as the Rocket Garden (a display of Redstone, Titan and Atlas rockets) and the Space Mirror (or at least its shadow) – a 13-metre high memorial to those who have lost their lives in space.

Over at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Saturn V rocket that we looked at four years ago is now under cover unfortunately. Still, at least we can gaze down on the very building in which the brainy Mission Control folks kept things running smoothly.

Of course Houston wasn’t the only place keeping tabs on the astronauts. As anyone who has seen the movie The Dish will know, at the time Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, it was on the “wrong” side of the Earth; which meant the historic TV signal was actually relayed via Australia.

The best pictures came from the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, but the signal was also picked up at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra. Sadly, Parkes is only visible in low-resolution (although you can glimpse the dish through the trees on Street View), and Honeysuckle Creek, while in high-res, was closed in 1981 and subsequently demolished.

And what of the first man on the moon? Neil Armstrong was born in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, and during his school years his family lived here on West Benton Street. The town is obviously proud of its famous son: in the vicinity we can find roads named Neil Armstrong Drive, Lunar Drive, Gemini Drive, Saturn Drive and Apollo Drive – the latter four located near the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, where exhibits apparently include the Gemini VIII spacecraft, Apollo 11 artefacts, a moon rock, and “multimedia presentations of the sights and sounds of space”².

Finally, let’s have a look at the moon itself! Google Moon has come on a bit since it was unveiled on the landing’s 36th anniversary, meaning you can even look around in Street View-esque panorama mode at the landing sites. And, in case you haven’t heard, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently managed to photograph 5 out of the 6 Apollo landing sites, with sufficient detail that you can make out the lunar module descent stages, and even, in one case, the trails of footprints left by the astronauts! Google has some way to go to match that sort of resolution, but as it happens, they are holding a special Google Earth news conference later today…

There’s more to see on our previous coverage of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, you can watch a real-time recreation of the landing at We Choose The Moon and join in with various celebratory events at NASA’s site.

Picher, Oklahoma is a small town in north-eastern Oklahoma near the Kansas-Missouri border. It was once a major hub for heavy metals extraction, boasting some of the most productive lead mines in the world. By the early 1970s however, all mining operations ceased leaving 480 kilometres of underground tunnels, more than 180 million tonnes of toxic waste, and a town without much of a future.

Located in close proximity to the Tar Creek Superfund Site, the citizens of Picher have been left to deal with toxic mine tailings left over from underground drilling operations. These tailing piles, known locally as “Chat“, litter the landscape, some towering one hundred metres or more above the town.

Aside from detracting from Picher’s overall scenic beauty, these chat piles contain extremely fine lead dust and pose a tremendous health risk to its citizens. Children are especially susceptible to the toxic dust because elevated levels of lead in their blood can lead to learning disabilities. Lead and zinc have even contaminated Picher’s drinking water as well as many swimming holes frequented by local youngsters.

To make matters worse, the kilometres of abandoned mining tunnels below the town have been collapsing since the 1950s and continue to do so even today. Due to this geological instability, much of the town has been deemed unsafe for habitation leaving many former commercial and residential blocks in disrepair.

In 1983, Picher and its surrounding mines were declared one of the most polluted places in the United States and became a top clean-up priority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the decades since, the EPA and the U.S. Government have made repeated attempts to relocate the residents of Picher. Though a small group of stalwart individuals have resisted relocation, the town is set to close on or around September 1 of this year. On June 13, a final farewell was held, allowing long-time residents to reflect on better times.

For more information about Picher’s history and final days take a look at this CNN article. Also worth checking out, “The Creek Runs Red” is a compelling documentary about the Tar Creek Superfund Site.

Thanks to Brian in Texas.

The spectacular Leptis Magna is an exceptionally well-preserved Roman city on the coast of Libya which has a history dating back over 3,000 years. Today the archaeological site is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

With a history dating back to 1100 BC, the city gained status as a leading part of the Roman Empire in AD 193 when Lucius Septimius Severus became the first African-born Emperor of Rome.

The baths at Leptis Magna

Although there are loads of ruins here, most of the prominent remains date from the first and second centuries, including the incredible theatre.

The theatre at Leptis Magna (ground-level photo)

Severus spent lavishly on new buildings for his home town as it developed into a major trading port, making sure he had an extensive market and a truly magnificent forum.

The market and forum at Leptis Magna

One of the major projects attempted during Severus’s reign was the redevelopment of the harbour, which was known for heavy silting. However, the changes just made the problem worse. Many of the quayside buildings are intact but rather annoyingly a strip of low-resolution imagery obscures the harbour.

However the good imagery returns further east, just in time for us to be able to see Leptis Magna’s wonderful amphitheatre – the location of amazing public spectacles, and the most prized symbol of Roman citizenship that a town could have.

The amphitheatre at Leptis Magna (ground-level photo)

The city eventually fell into decline in the fourth century when trade moved elsewhere, but thanks to Emperor Severus and his ebullient spending, there remains an absolute wealth of history for people to explore in his once splendid home town.

Wikipedia of course has lots of info, but I recommend that you visit the Temehu site for excellent pictures and background, with a more detailed history to be found at Livius.org. Also see an earlier post on Google Sightseeing about the city of Sabratha.

When the Romans invaded Britain in the 1st century AD, they never quite managed to conquer Caledonia – the area now known as Scotland.

We’ll never know whether the Roman army felt it was too much like hard work to defeat the fearsome northern tribes, or were simply under-attired for the fearsome Scottish weather; either way, in AD 122 the Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a wall to defend his territory from the lands to the north.

Hadrian’s Wall stretched for 80 Roman miles (73.5 modern-day miles, or 117km), from the Solway Firth (where the wall is still visible) to the River Tyne (where the wall has vanished, but the fort of Segedunum, which marked its eastern end, has been excavated).

Despite being almost 2,000 years old (and having been heavily plundered by the locals for building materials after the Romans left), a surprising amount of the wall can still be seen today. One of the best preserved stretches is near the village of Gilsland. Here you can also see the foundations of the Roman bridge across the River Irthing – although since it was built the course of the river has shifted westwards.

There are an astonishing number of Roman sites in this area, as a look at the Ordnance Survey map shows. Among them are Birdoswald fort; the nicely preserved milecastle 48¹ (right next to the spot where the railway line slices through the wall); and a couple of Roman camps. The shadows on the aerial photography really show up the traces of old structures and ditches, even where there is little else left on the ground.

The wall was not a single structure: at various stages in its history it was extended, and separate banks and ditches added. Among the later additions was the Vallum, consisting of three earth banks separated by ditches, running parallel to the wall a few hundred metres to the south. The surviving stretches also show up well in aerial imagery; if you scroll northwards from this point you can see the wall itself.

In many places, the builders used the natural topography to help create a formidable barrier. One spectacular stretch of wall follows a steep rocky ridge, Highshield Crags.

The low angle of the sun creates some dramatic shadows here – and if you zoom right in, you can see the shadow of a sycamore tree in the hollow between two ridges. This location, known as Sycamore Gap, will be familiar to fans of the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: it’s the spot where Kevin Costner rescued a small boy from the dastardly Guy of Gisbourne.²

Read more about Hadrian’s Wall at Wikipedia. The 84-mile-long Hadrian’s Wall Path National Trail follows the course of the wall, and its website has a great gallery of ground-level photos.

This post is part of an occasional series where we visit some of the world’s most interesting abandoned places.

A couple of hundred kilometres northwest of Las Vegas lies the former mining town of Rhyolite, one of the largest ghost towns in Nevada.

Founded in 1904, the town had an initially huge level of growth, but it was abruptly abandoned just a handful of years later. Today the eerie remains of Rhyolite which still survive here in the desert provide us with a fascinating look into America’s past.

The town was named for the richest ore in the area, rhyolite; but it was a gold rush in the nearby hills that propelled the population to around 4,000 just three years later.

By this time the town had water mains, electricity, telephones, a hospital, a bank, an opera house, a school, the railroad, and (allegedly) 53 saloons.

The ruin of the Cook Bank Building; and as it was in its heyday.

By the end of 1910 the Montgomery Shoshone Mine – the town’s lifeblood – was operating at a loss, and in 1911 it closed for good. With the mine gone there was nothing to keep the people here any longer, and by 1920 the population of Rhyolite was effectively zero.

Rhyolite School today; and as it was in 1915, already looking deserted.

One of the best surviving buildings in Rhyolite is the former Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot. It’s unusual for ghost towns in Nevada¹ to have this many buildings remaining – the survival of these ones in the harsh desert environment is thanks to their construction using materials other than wood and canvas. Like the house made of tens of thousands of beer bottles.

Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot today; and under construction in 1908.

The buildings here won’t last forever, but the fact that they have survived this long is impressive enough.

Vimeo has a good video tour, Flickr has a ton of photos, and the official site has a wealth of absolute fascinating historical photos.