Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve was member of a family of prominent astronomers¹. While the majority of his work involved the study of astronomical bodies, he also turned his attentions to geodetic surveying – the measurement and representation of the Earth.

He studied at the University of Tartu in Estonia and established the first of his triangulation points at the observatory in that town. There is a large stone monument just to the north of the main building.

Further locations were established roughly along a meridian line originating in Tartu and spanning almost 3,000km. The majority of the sites were hill- or mountain-tops, or other prominent points of land. This wide range of triangulation points would have allowed accurate calculations of the size of the whole planet.

The 265 locations were – at that time – in only two countries: the Sweden-Norway Union and the Russian Empire. The intervening years have seen these two disintegrate into ten separate countries. Most of the 34 locations which make up the World Heritage Site are marked by monuments of some kind. The northernmost point is in Hammerfest, Norway. It’s a low-res area on Google maps, but the monument is worth a closer look.

In Tornio, northern Finland, the quite beautiful Alatornion kirkko was the only building – other than the Tartu observatory – that was used as a triangulation point.

Further south in Finland, Aavasaksa is a small hill also used as a triangulation point. At the top there is a hunting lodge used by leaders of the Russian Empire. It is currently in use as a cafe and there is a monument consisting of a large boulder surrounded by an iron representation of the globe.

In the Baltic Sea, points were located on two islands: the highest point on Finland’s Mustaviiri, and a hill-top on Russia’s Gogland.

The village of Jekabpils in Latvia has a park named after Struve at the location of the triangulation point.

The majority of points to the south of the Arc – in Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine – are marked by small monuments, in rural areas covered by low-res imagery, so there’s not much to see on satellite images. If you’re curious, you can find many of the locations marked on this Google Maps interface.

The southernmost monument is in what appears to be a housing development in the Ukrainian town of Stara Nekrasivka,

Wikipedia has a bit more information, while the Wikidot entry has a detailed list and map of all 265 triangulation points, along with photos of many of the World Heritage locations.

Locations: Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Street Views, Structures, World Heritage Sites

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This 360m long, 72m high behemoth weighing 220,000 tons was constructed in Turku, Finland, where unfortunately Google only has very low resolution images. However, we’re fairly sure that the white rectangle in the centre of this image is the Oasis! Panoramio has numerous photos of the ship under construction.

Designed to carry up to 6,300 passengers and over 2,000 crew, this ship is almost 50% larger than the Freedom class vessels mentioned in our previous post. It is so large that, soon after delivery, it faced a major obstacle in the form of the Great Belt Fixed Link bridge in Denmark. The Oasis had to safely pass under this bridge in order to reach the North Sea.

Her retractable funnels were lowered as much as possible, but still she had to build up speed to ride low enough in the water to pass under the bridge with less than 60cm to spare! A pair of YouTube videos show how perilous this was – from on board the ship, and from land.

After surviving this first test, the Oasis crossed the Atlantic to its home port of Port Everglades in Florida, from where it will cruise the Caribbean starting in December. It will be joined by a sister ship, MS Allure of the Seas, in 2010.

In addition to now-standard activities such as surf simulators and climbing walls, passengers will enjoy numerous ground-breaking cruise ship features such as an open air central park (with real trees and grass) running the length of the ship, ‘loft’ cabins and a bar which travels up and down between decks. There is also 25m zipline and a boardwalk (with carousel and tattoo parlour) leading to an outdoor theatre for aquatic shows with a spectacular backdrop of the open ocean.

Most cruises will call in at Labadee – Royal Caribbean’s ‘private island’ – in reality a fenced-off peninsula on Haiti’s northern coast, where workers are rushing to finish construction on a pier long enough to accommodate these new ships.

While this fake tourism would be unbearable by many, 500 locals directly benefit from employment or from selling their wares at the ‘flea market’, and Haiti’s poverty-strapped government happily rakes in $6 for each passenger. At other ports, locals and visitors alike complain about overcrowding when multiple ships are in port on the same day. This new generation of ships may only increase this problem, as well as the usual environmental concerns of fuel usage and the effect on coral reefs and wildlife.

Marine Buzz has an excellent article about the Oasis, while USA Today has some great pictures of the construction process.

Locations: Denmark, Finland, Florida, Haiti / Categories: Bridges, Islands, Watercraft

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Rather more modern than the Ethiopian Rock Churches which I wrote about recently, Temppeliaukio was originally conceived before the second world war. Construction was finally completed in 1969, at a quarter of the originally-intended size. I assume the Church would have filled most of the rocky area clearly visible from Bing Maps’ bird’s eye view.

The image of a space ship surrounded by rock originally created some controversy, but over time it has grown to become one of Helsinki’s leading tourist attractions.

Temppeliaukio is perhaps best appreciated from the inside where the bare granite walls and gleaming copper dome are lit with natural light from 180 windows which separate those two elements of the structure.

Rock excavated for the interior of the Church was used to build up the walls, and to create the entranceway. While the walls were originally supposed to be covered over, it was decided to leave the rock bare as it created excellent acoustics for musical performances.

Thanks to kockopes.

Locations: Finland / Categories: Buildings

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