Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 motorway over a 1033 metre section of the Don Valley, and is one of Sheffield’s most prominent landmarks. Sadly there’s not much to see from our viewpoint.

Fortunately for us however, the Tinsley Viaduct runs right past the Tinsley Towers, a fantastic pair of defunct cooling towers. Due to their extremely close proximity to the viaduct, they were left standing when the power plant they served was demolished in the 70s.

As it happens, “extremely close” is a bit of an understatement – the nearest tower stands only 12 metres from the M1!

Actually, “stood” is the correct term I’m afraid.

Following years of strengthening work to the viaduct (and presumably advances in demolition technology), the towers were finally brought down¹ in the early hours of Sunday the 24th August. You can watch a video of the spectacular destruction of the towers over at the BBC.

Thanks to Radio 2 and the ever informative Jonathan Rawle.

The Oil Rocks, 50km off the coast of Azerbaijan, is effectively a small city that has been constructed from interconnected oil platforms and residential areas, all sitting atop rocks, piles of sand and landfill.

Back in 1949, the Oil Rocks were the site of the world’s first successful offshore venture in oil drilling, and by the 1960s 21 million tons of oil was being extracted each year.

Of course, this level of extraction couldn’t continue forever, and the quality and quantity of the oil started falling in the 80s. With it, the upkeep of the platforms and interconnecting roads fell, and today about a third of the oil wells are either inoperative or inaccessible, and many of the connecting roads have become submerged.

Despite the conditions, the platforms still have a combined population of about 5,000 men, who work in week-long offshore shifts, and collectively they produce over half of the total crude oil output of Azerbaijan.

Several action sequences in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough are set and filmed on the Oil Rocks, where terrorists used a giant helicopter saw to cut the oil pipes. Obviously.

There’s a thorough history at window2baku.com, Wikipedia has a couple of choice facts, and there’s a photo of the interconnecting bridges at travel-images.com.

Update: What we’re seeing here is actually not the Oil Rocks, but is very close. Oil Rocks is further out to sea, unfortunately in an low res area. You can get an idea of how big Oil Rocks really is from the OpenAerialMap image.

Thanks to Samir Aliyev and Panda32 in the comments.

No, not that one – this cutting-edge bridge is in Japan, and it really is seriously wobbly! It’s virtually serrated by virtue of its cutting-edge wibbly-wobblyness.

It’s so wobbly in fact, that it’s only accessible to specially-built, hand-customised “wobbly vehicles”, which “snake” along the bridge in an effort to prevent traffic-jams.

As is the way with brilliant Japanese inventions, eventually someone will realise just how brilliant this design is, rename it something pedestrian like “Bridge Heaven”, and bring it to the western world in about 3 years’ time.

Thanks to gamma.

Such is the volume of new imagery that is added to Google Earth, that by the time we got around to posting the longest cross-sea bridge in the world, it had already been superseded.

Fortunately for us however, the current reigning champion was captured whilst still under construction, which means that we’re able to bring you the longest cross-sea bridge on Google Earth, China’s Donghai Bridge.

Measuring a whopping 32.5 kilometres (20.2 miles), the Donghai Bridge was completed in 2005, and connects Shanghai (above) to the Yangshan Islands in the East China Sea.

Most of the six lane bridge is low-level viaduct, but there are two cable-stayed sections which allow ships to pass, the larger of which has a span of 420 m.

Apparently the seemingly meandering path the bridge takes across the East China Sea was specifically designed to keep drivers more alert during their long crossing.

While questions have been raised over the financial logic of projects like the Donghai Bridge, China is rapidly emerging as the new Land of Long Bridges. China now has seven of the top twelve longest bridges in the world, all of which were completed in the last 5 years.

There’s information about and a great picture of the Donghai Bridge available at Wikipedia. You can also read about the current longest cross-sea bridge, which will likely also have been superseded by the time we get to it.

Thanks to Lukas Nowacki and Tom.

No, you’re not seeing triple – these are Pittsburgh’s Three Sisters, a trio of nearly identical suspension bridges erected side by side over the Allegheny River.

Rachel Carson (Ninth Street Bridge)

All three were built between 1924 and 1928 by the aptly-named American Bridge Company, and they are the only trio of nearly identical bridges, as well as the first self-anchored suspension span bridges in the United States.

Andy Warhol (Seventh Street Bridge)

The 9th and 7th street bridges are named for Pittsburgh natives Rachel Carson and Andy Warhol, whilst the 6th is named for the baseball player Roberto Clemente, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose home field is the nearby PNC Park baseball stadium.

Roberto Clemente (Sixth Street Bridge)

Thanks to Google’s Street View feature, as well as being able to see what these bridges look like when you’re on them, we can also see what it’s like to cross the 6th street bridge and see the other two.

Thanks to Nitehawk. Read more about the Three Sisters at Wikipedia.

See our previous posts Double Bridge Shadow, Double Drawbridge and Three Sisters, Australia.