It’s still the 14th of February for another hour in some time zones, so we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day with this heart-shaped swimming pool in Belgium!

Yes okay, that’s a stretch. In reality the only places to actually use UTC minus 12 hours are the uninhabited American territories of Baker Island and Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean (links are to Wikipedia).

As for the islands themselves, Baker has no coverage unfortuantely, but 68 kilometres to the north, Howland is captured with excellent quality imagery.

Not that there’s much to see of course. In fact other than using UTC-12, the only likely reason you might have heard of Howland Island is that this is where noted American aviator Amelia Earhart famously failed to reach during her attempt to make a circumnavigational flight in 1937.

Thanks to virtualglobetrotting.

Possibly the most ambitious of Dubai’s land reclamation projects, The World is an archipelago of 300 islands laid out to represent countries of the world.

The first developed island is owned by Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher. The $7 million piece of land was gifted to him by Dubai’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and is located in the Arctic (although I’m sure he would have preferred Germany).

There’s various rumours of who owns the other islands, including reports that Rod Stewart spent $33 million to buy mini-Britain.

The entire project is scheduled for completion in 2008, and over in what looks like it might be Spain, we see a boat “spraying” sand to create the island.

Official Website and thanks to Brad, Catherine, alexandrecavaco, Others.

Here on Tenerife there’s an absolutely gigantic shape on the landscape, which looks very like a B2 Stealth Bomber. Just a coincidental arrangement of images, or the accidental discovery of a super-secret B2 Invisibility Cloak?

Via haha.nu (Thanks Rob W & Gudlyf)

To add to our collection of dolphin-shaped things from last week, here’s the Ile du Golfe off the south coast of Tasmania which looks astonishingly like (you guessed it), an absolutely gigantic dolphin.

More on the Maatsuyker Islands, of which the Ile du Golfe is part.

Thanks to Murphy.

After the North Sea flood of 1953 destroyed 4,500 buildings, drowned 10,000 animals and killed 1,835 people, the Netherlands began work on the world’s largest flood protection project, Delta Works (Dutch: Deltawerken). Today Delta Works consists of over 16,500 kilometres of dams, 300 structures and 1,650 sq. km. of reclaimed land (Wikipedia page).

Here’s a couple of the more interesting highlights of Delta Works, but there’s a map of all the dams on the official site which you can use to identify all the others if you like.

Oosterscheldekering

Oosterscheldekering (Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier) is the largest and most expensive of all the projects which make up Delta Works. Constructed using custom designed and built ships, this 9 kilometre dam is the world’s largest movable flood barrier, took 10 years to finish and has since been declared one of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers (Wikipedia page).

Maeslantkering

The Maeslantkering (Maeslant Barrier) (previous featured here in minature form) is designed to protect Rotterdam’s harbour, and had to be retractable to allow shipping to take place unimpeded. If a 3 metre wave is approaching, the enormous arms swing in to meet in the middle (after 4 hours warning). Which might seem excessive until you discover that either arm would be as high as the Eiffel Tower if stood on end, and that they each weigh 4 times more than the Paris monument (Wikipedia page).

Thanks to Bruce, nixx, RB, kipz0r and Sven van Heel.