It’s hard not to see the rear of a naked woman in the shapes made by this field in Sicily, Italy.

As you can see though, the title of this post refers not to the fact that she’s half naked (as she clearly has no clothes on at all), but rather that she’s only half a woman - as she seems to be missing all her limbs. And her head.¹

Thanks to Santi.

Today on the island of Tanna, Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, it’s John Frum Day.

Each year on the 15th of February, hundreds of people come to the tiny village of Lamakara from all over the island to celebrate their devotion to their deity, John Frum. These worshippers are described by anthropologists as members of a “cargo cult”, and the John Frum cargo cult is one of the last in existence.

Many cargo cults arose in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, after hundreds of thousands of American troops descended upon the islands from the skies and seas, bringing with them a seemingly endless bounty of supplies and material goods. Hardly any wonder then that when the troops eventually left the islands, the locals began to pray for the return of the cargo.

The name ‘John Frum’ is sometimes considered a corruption of “John from (America)”, and the cult believe that their saviour will eventually bring more cargo to this island, just as he did during WWII. Although it’s possible that John Frum existed before the 40s, he would most likely have been described as a white man until black American GIs arrived, whereupon the cult’s devotees very sensibly decided that in fact John Frum had been a black man all along.

Today in Lamakara, John Frum’s followers will be dressing up as GIs, painting “U.S.A.” on their chests, raising the American flag, building symbolic landing strips, carrying bamboo bayonets, and marching to the top of their local volcano, Yasur¹.

Confusingly, the central tenet of John Fruminism² is actually the rejection of Westernism - devotees are instead encouraged to return to traditional “kastom” (a local word for native Tannese customs).

For more info see these articles on the cult at Smithsonian Magazine, damninteresting.com and the BBC, as well as the obligatory Wikipedia pages on Vanuatu, Tanna, Cargo Cults and John Frum.

Thanks to Brett Hanover.

In the past few years the competition has been hotting up to build the world’s largest passenger vessels, resulting in huge craft which would dwarf ships like RMS Titanic. Today we’re going to take a look at some of the World’s Biggest Passenger Ships!

Floating off the coast of Conzumel, Mexico is MS Freedom of the Seas, the largest passenger ship in the world which weighs in at 154,407 tons and is capable of carrying 4370 passengers! Guests are entertained by 3 huge pools, shops, pubs and even a climbing wall. If you think your car has poor fuel efficiency, take heart in the fact that this behemoth uses 12.8 tonnes of fuel… per hour!

Freedom of the Seas was built in the Aker yards in Turku, Finland, between 2004 and 2005, and in 2007 her sister ship, MS Liberty of the Seas, was also completed there to exactly the same specification. Microsoft Live Maps’ birds-eye feature has caught the construction in action, and it’s extraordinary to see the work that goes into a ship of this size. Check out the helipad on the bow!

(Warning: Live Maps are still not compatible with Safari I’m afraid!)

Until Freedom and Liberty became the largest passenger ships in the world, the title was held by Cunard’s famous RMS Queen Mary 2¹. At 148,528 gross tons she’s only slightly lighter, but takes the distinction of being the longest at 345 metres, as well as the highest and also the widest! Here she is docked in New York City.

Moored in Florida is one of Disney’s own fleet of two ships, Magic and Wonder. The two ships are almost identical, but I have it on good authority that this is Wonder. At 964 feet these are no record breakers, but I thought they were worthy of a mention!

The ships generally cruise the Caribbean, where one of their main stops is one of Disney’s own private islands, ‘Castaway Cay‘.

On board the ships there are some rather unique features for the 2400 passengers to enjoy, such as computer simulators to let you imagine you are guiding the ship, spas, and a whopping 24×14 foot LCD TV attached to the front funnel of the ship. However, what wins it for me is the main swimming pool, which of course is shaped like Mickey Mouse!

Read more about Freedom of the Seas, Queen Mary 2 and the Disney Cruise Line at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Joao Almeida, Rob B, Jolo Quina, Tim, Chris, adam wanderman, greg and orchjoe.

On the very northernmost coast of Taiwan lies the spookily bizarre San Zhi resort, which consists entirely of circular, multi-coloured pods stacked on top of one another. Furthermore, these strange habitats have been completely abandoned for a number of years, and are slowly rotting away into nothing.

One story says that the project had to be abandoned after several fatal accidents occurred during construction, and according to local rumours, this ghost city is now haunted by those who died building it.

There seems to be very little actual information about these buildings available online (at least in English), but they may have been built by the government in the early 80s “in an attempt to position this as a luxurious holiday location for the rich of Taipei”. The concept behind the strange design might have been that they could expand the buildings vertically as required, simply by adding more pods on top.

Whatever the truth behind this mysterious place, make sure you check out these stunning HDR photographs of these utterly weird buildings.

Thanks to Chris Case and James Boorman-Padgett.

As 2007 draws to a close we present our choices for the best posts of the year.

Best Mystery

There were numerous contenders for the most confusing or bizarre images, but our pick is the Mystery Plane Outline, as even the generally accepted answer, that these are small rocks arranged in the shape of a plane, still begs the question: “But why bother?”.

Best personal project

In February we were impressed with one man’s attempt to single-handedly recreate a cruise ship in his front drive.

Lamest World Record

The Largest Wooden ship in the world from April easily wins this prize, due to having a less-than-exciting title and the fact that the specially built ship has never even been in the water!

A special mention also goes to the German towns squabbling over who has the most unintentionally leaning building.

Our Brains Hurt Award

Getting our heads around the Island and Lake recursion from September’s Island Week 2 was almost too much, but I think we get it now…

Best Smallest Thing

We loved the idea of the world’s smallest parks from January, but the world’s smallest municipal park was just too darn small to see from satellite! Fortunately, Google now have a street view shot of it.

Best World’s Most Enlarged Thing

In the last year we’ve featured many, many sights that claim to be the “World’s largest something” but our pick for the Best Largest something is the World’s largest fingerprint.

Best Imagery

Undoubtedly the most amazing images to be found in Google Earth are the African Megaflyover project aerial shots, and the best of these images were highlighted in November’s Google Sightseeing Safari.

Best Blurry Pictures

Some of the aerial images in Google Earth are amazingly high resolution, but not high enough for our tour of miniature parks across the globe, which ended up as a list of blurry blobs that sort-of look like the Eiffel tower.

Best Landart

The ancient Incan geoglyph of a cat is fantastic, and much more intersting and attractive than kfc’s logo stunt.

Most Ignored Warning

A few days after we posted this year’s April fools joke: “Live Satellite Images in Google Earth” we updated the entry with a banner warning users that it was a prank and there are no live images to be seen. Did anyone read that? Of course not! We still get a new message almost every week from someone who fell for the joke and wants to know where the live images are.

Most In-Depth Post

For a long time it had no decent imagery, so during Island Week this year we really went to town on our Easter Island post, and managed to condense 2,000 years of history into a mere 600 words.

Best Large Type

The rooftop message “Welcome to Cleveland” isn’t very interesting at first glance, until you realise that the message is over 400 miles away in Milwaukee!

So that’s our picks of the year, but with over 250 entries in 2007, what were your favourites?

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2008 - see you all next year!

(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir - which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

(It’s Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.)

Pollepel Island is located in the Hudson River, New York. A characterless lump of rock, it would have been completely uninteresting had Francis Bannerman not decided to build a castle on the island, and then fill it with weapons…

This was in the late 1800s and Bannerman, a Scottish immigrant, and the world’s largest buyer of surplus military equipment was doing a roaring trade in munitions. When he purchased most of the captured goods from the Spanish American war he needed somewhere to store it all, preferably somewhere where large amounts of gunpowder would be safe.

So he purchased Pollepel Island and set about building an imitation Scottish castle of his own design, complete with lookout turrets and a moat. The buildings took 17 years to complete and feature giant concrete text across the side which reads “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal”.

Years later, the family sold the island back to New York State who for a short time operated tours around the castle. Although all the munitions had been removed, in 1969 a fire of “unknown origin” destroyed the building’s interiors, making it too dangerous to visit. Today, a trust group hope to stabilise the castle and re-open it for tours.

More info on the castle at its official website, the Hudson river site, and of course Wikipedia.

Thanks to Marc Cohen and Bill Parco.

(It’s Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.)

Located in the south eastern Pacific Ocean, almost four thousand kilometers from continental Chile, Easter Island - or locally Rapa Nui - is one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands¹, as well as one of the world’s most fascinating archaeological sites.

Photo of Rano Raraku Moai from mappic.org

The human history of Easter Island probably began somewhere between AD 300 and 1200 when people from the islands west of here landed with the tools, animals and provisions to stay for good. Although only 171 km² in area, at the time Easter Island had extensive forests, and the volcanic craters held drinking water - which is an important feature on an island with no rivers.

Rano Kau volcano (Picture)

Somewhere between AD 1000 and 1500, the Rapanui began a period of frantic construction of enormous stone statues - the Moai, for which Easter Island is world famous today. These enigmatic figures represented the islander’s deified ancestors, and were mostly placed near the coast, with their backs to the sea.

Moai of Ahu Nau Nau, Anakena Beach (Picture)

Moai are hewn from the island’s volcanic rock², and the largest Moai erected was almost 10 metres high and weighed 75 tonnes; their production and transportation is considered a remarkable accomplishment.

Moai of Ahu Tongariki (Picture)

887 Moai have been identified to date, however only a quarter ever made it to one of the coastal Ahu platforms - nearly half of all Moai remain at a single site called Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater where 95% were originally carved. The landscape is littered with 397 Moai - some half-finished, some semi-submerged in the earth through erosion, and others never even detached from the rock.³

Rano Raraku crater, Rano Raraku Moai (Picture)

By the time explorers arrived here in the 18th Century, the forests of the island had completely disappeared. It’s unknown whether or not the Rapanui had used all the trees in the construction of the Moai, or if some other ecological factor was involved, but either way the islanders were now trapped - there was no longer any wood available for making seaworthy canoes.

After this things began to go rapidly downhill for the inhabitants of Easter Island. There followed a period of tribal wars, raids by Peruvian slavers, epidemics of European diseases, and the conversion of the entire island into a sheep farm. During this period much Rapa Nui culture was lost forever, nearly all of the Moai were deliberately toppled (probably by warring tribal factions), and by the late 19th century only 111 of the indigenous people remained alive.

Somehow, against all the odds, today there are several thousand descendants of the surviving 111 Rapanui living on Easter Island - which now has sustainable forestry and the longest runway in Polynesia (having been extended to function as an emergency landing place for the U.S. Space Shuttle). The Moai have returned too - many have been re-erected on their Ahus around the island and one has even been given new eyes.

Moai at Ahu Akivi, unusual in not being on the coast, and facing towards the sea (Picture)

Read more about Easter Island and Moai at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Josh, Adam, Reinhold and Didier.