Damming the Paraná River on the border between Brazil and Paraguay sits an incredible engineering achievement – the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world, Itaipú.

Itaipú is 196 metres high and contains enough iron and steel to build 380 Eiffel Towers. It took 40 thousand people to build it, and they had to move 50 million tons of earth and rock to do it.

In 1995 Itaipú provided 25% of the total energy requirement of Brazil, as well as 78% of Paraguay’s! The facility has been constantly upgraded since then, and the expansion is expected to bring the amount of energy produced next year to over 100 million megawatt-hours.

Make sure you zoom in on the flow from the spillway, and there’s more fascinating facts at Wikipedia!

Thanks to floki, Oliver Dueck, Luciano A. Ferrer, Rhaffael C. C de Barros, Bong Laden, Doug Olson, Vinicius Lage, Juliano Oliveira, Olaf van Zandwijk and Manuel Fernandez.

This is the small city of Madurodam in the Netherlands. They have an airport, canals, stadiums, boats, gardens, windmills and bridges with… giant people on them? And there’s some giant cars too! Waaaait a minute…

Madurodam is actually a truly small city – in fact it’s a 1:25 scale model of a Dutch city, which features traditional Dutch buildings, famous landmarks from around the country, and the world’s largest miniature railway! (I know. Just don’t even go there.)

More history and ground level shots of this great sight at Wikipedia and the official site.

Thanks to Mickey Mau.

Following on from yesterday’s Rio-Antirio Bridge, right at the very end of the Gulf of Corinth is the Corinth Canal, a 6.3 kilometre long canal which technically turned the Peloponnesian peninsula into an island upon its completion in 1893. Although the canal is only 21 metres wide it’s considered a great technical achievement for its time, and saves small ships the 400 km long journey around the Peloponnesus.

At each end of the canal there are unique submersible bridges which can be lowered to the bottom of the canal to allow the boats to get past! Very cool. You can see a sequence of photos showing the bridge in action on the Wikipedia page.

At a naval base in La Spezia, Italy, we see the world famous tall ship “Amerigo Vespucci”. She was ordered in 1925 along with the Cristoforo Colombo, an identical ship that was decommissioned by the USSR after WWII, and is modelled on 18th century cannon ships.

However the Amerigo Vespucci has no cannons, which is a shame as I think cannons would have made the Cutty Sark Tall Ships’ Race – which she often competes in – a much more exciting affair.

The Naval Base is worth browsing as there’s various submarines and other ships in dry-dock kicking around. Wikipedia Link.

Thanks: Thomas Blüthgen

The Navy Training Centre in San Diego is a closed facility that is currently being turned in to a shopping centre so there’s not much to see, except for the USS Recruit – a destroyer that seems to be a little out of place.

The nearby Naval Outlying Field (NOLF) Imperial Beach has various features for training up Navy SEALs for combat. For a start there’s a grid layout to the north, which is a fake city used for MOUT training (that’s “missions on urban terrain” for the rest of us).

South of that there’s also a disused “Elephant Cage” radio station, similar to the previously posted one at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

But what’s most interesting is that beside some white tents and an archery range further south we see that, using Alien technology first harnessed by the Australians, the US Navy has developed flying pyramids! (or perhaps covered climbing towers).

Thanks: Tom Barr & jmauro