The Phoenix Shot Tower in Baltimore was erected in 1828 and stands at 71.3m, which at that time made it the tallest structure in the United States, as well as the world’s largest free-standing masonry tower¹.

The shot tower was invented by an Englishman in 1783, and soon spread across the globe as the preferred method of making lead shot for shotguns.

The process involves pouring molten lead through a copper sieve at the top of the tower, so that droplets fall the height of the tower, taking the form of tiny perfect balls during their descent. The lead then splash-lands in a water bath at the bottom, which sets the pellet.

These days shot is made using a centrifuge, so now only a handful of the once-ubiquitous shot towers exist worldwide.

The largest shot tower that was ever built is the 80.16m tall Clifton Hill Shot Tower in Melbourne.

Probably very impressive in 1882 when it was completed, but by the standards of today’s tallest towers, it’s tiny!

More info on shot towers at Wikipedia.

This is supposedly the Hokkaidō Centennial Memorial Tower in Nopporo Forest Park, Hokkaidō, Japan. The official site claims it’s 100m tall, and was completed in 1970 to honour the 100th anniversary of Hokkaidō’s official colonisation¹.

Of course dear geeky-reader, you will have already realised that this is simply an elaborate ruse.

Unmistakably, this is in fact Orthanc, the black tower of Isengard, atop which Gandalf was trapped by the wizard Saruman during The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

On the left, the Hokkaidō tower, and on the right, Orthanc.

The proof is incontrovertible, as I found both of these images on the Internet.

Thanks to photojennic.

The Skyneedle is an 88m tower in Brisbane, Queensland, that was constructed for the World Expo ’88.¹ During the course of the Expo the tower shone a beam of light upwards that could be seen from 60km away.

After the Expo ended the tower was supposed to go to Tokyo Disneyland, but successful local hairdresser Stefan Ackerie felt that the Skyneedle should stay in Brisbane. He felt so strongly in fact, that he bought it himself and had it moved just 500m to his company’s headquarters.

The tower light was originally only used on special occasions, as it could potentially cause havoc for aircraft headed to the nearby Brisbane Airport, but in 2006 an electrical fault caused a fire near the top of the tower, and today it’s unclear if the light works at all.

There’s a bizarre bonus sight at the back of Stefan’s building too – an 8.5m long tennis racket, which was purportedly designed as a giant catapult?

Just what hairdresser Stefan planned to catapult is anyone’s guess.

More information on Expo ’88 and The Skyneedle at Wikipedia, and Stefan himself at his corporate website.

Thanks to Ashley Thistlethwaite.

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.

While I don’t admit to possess a particularly green thumb, I do have a penchant for anything which either looks good from the air, or lays claim to unnecessary, ambiguous World Records. Just like here at the Royal Botanic Gardens, or simply Kew Gardens, London, England.

A Royal Palace is usually a great place for a day out, but Kew’s is rather lacklustre, taking the title of the Smallest Palace in Britain. Nevertheless, it was the family home of George III, and it is here that he suffered his ‘madness’¹, which was presumably caused by the cost of the garden’s upkeep.

Sitting in the far corner of the gardens is the Great Pagoda which stands a pretty impressive 49 metres high. At the time it was built in 1763, it was the tallest Chinese-inspired structure in Europe. During World War 2, the towers were modified to test the way in which bombs fell, and today it affords rather splendid views over the Gardens, as these photos show.

When I started writing for Google Sightseeing, I decided as a rule never to post about compost heaps that I had found. I changed my tune entirely when I discovered Kew was home to the largest compost heap in the World, complete with its own viewing deck! The majority of this vast compost heap is used on the plants at Kew, some is actually auctioned off for charity.²

At almost 5000 square metres in area, and holding the title of Largest Victorian Glasshouse in the World, the Temperate House really is vast (twice the size of the nearby Palm House). At the centre of the Temperate House is the Chilean wine-palm, which at a heady 16 metres, towers into the record books as the World’s largest Indoor Plant.

This snazzy structure is the Princess of Wales’ conservatory, opened in 1987, its design is quite blatantly stolen from blueprints of Darth Vadar’s Star Destroyer. Within this and the other glasshouses, Kew has over 30,000 living plants, and 7 million seed specimens.

Find out more about Kew at their official website, and at Wikipedia, whilst there are loads of photos at flickr. Thanks to Lindsay Marshall, Stephen Train and Tom.