Top ten tallest lighthouses

The world’s tallest lighthouse is the 133m (436 ft) Jeddah Light in Saudi Arabia, which doubles as the control tower for this busy commercial port. The white tower and dome can be seen from about 40km away, and it’s a vital marker on this coastline which is dotted with dangerous coral reefs.

The second-tallest lighthouse is technically a monument rather than a true navigational aid, and is unfortunately (for us) located on an island in Lake Erie which is only covered by low-resolution satellite imagery. The 107m (351 ft) tall granite tower has the somewhat unwieldy title of “Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial”, and it commemorates a US naval victory over Britain in the War of 1812.

Just one metre shorter is the Yokohama Tower which also stretches the true definition of a lighthouse. While it is illuminated, the tower mainly serves as a tourist attraction with an observation deck and restaurant offering views of the city.

From here on we’re looking at more traditional lighthouses, built solely to serve as beacons for shipping. The fourth tallest lighthouse is found on the island of Île Vierge off the north-west coast of France. Built in the late 1800s, this lighthouse (like many around the world) has today been automated, though in this case a lighthouse keeper still lives on site. Despite the hazy image, Street View from the nearest point on the mainland gives us a good idea of how immense it is.

The Lanterna is one of the most famous landmarks in the Italian port of Genoa, and a lighthouse has stood on this spot since the 12th century.

The existing 77m (253 ft) tall structure dates to the 16th century, though it has been repaired many times following damage from lightning strikes and military action. While it’s visible from many parts of the city, it really needs to be seen from up close to be truly appreciated. There’s also a good museum at its base, though you’ll need to find your way past the busy ramps used by trucks going to and from the port.

Back to France for the sixth tallest lighthouse – the Phare de Gatteville. At 75m (246 ft), the granite tower was the tallest in the world when it was constructed in the 1830s.

The recent launch of Street View imagery in Russia gives us a good look at the seventh tallest lighthouse – the Lesnoy Mole Rear Range Light in the commercial port of St Petersburg. The distinctive red and white stripes of this 73m (240 ft) tall structure also identify it as a range light – a marker to help sea traffic approach a narrow channel.

The eighth and ninth tallest are just a few kilometres apart on Hainan island in China. The Mulantou and Baishamen lighthouses are both 72m (236 ft) tall and mark the narrow strait between the island and the mainland.

Finally, the tenth tallest lighthouse in the world is the Storozhenskiy Light on Russia’s Lake Ladoga, but sadly it isn’t visible on satellite view yet.

Tall lighthouses around the world

The tallest lighthouse in the southern hemisphere is the Recalada a Bahía Blanca Light in Argentina – a 67m (220 ft) tall iron tower allegedly built by the same company that built the Eiffel Tower.

The recently launched Street View imagery in Poland allows us to see the world’s tallest brick lighthouse – the 65m (213 ft) tall Świnoujście Lighthouse.

The tallest lighthouse in the US is the Cape Hatteras Light in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Originally built in the 1860s, the structure was moved inland several hundred metres in 1999 to protect it from shore erosion. This video shows how it was moved.

The UK’s tallest lighthouse sits on a remote rock called Skerryvore off the west coast of Scotland, and isn’t visible on Google Maps, so instead let’s travel to Africa, where the tallest lighthouse is the Nosy Alañaña Light on the tiny Île aux Prunes off Madagascar.

Locations: Argentina, China, France, Italy, Japan, Madagascar, North Carolina, Ohio, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia / Categories: Monuments, Shadows, Street Views, Structures, Towers, Watercraft

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5: New Delhi

Our first mention takes us to India’s capital city, New Delhi, which is home to a population of nearly 14 million within its metropolitan area. From those who responded in the IBM survey, 62 percent say traffic has negatively impacted their school or job performance, and 96 percent say traffic has negatively affected their overall health! Looking from above, it’s hard to spot any real lane usage by any of the multitude of buses, cars, and rickshaws!

4: Moscow

64 percent of the surveyed commuters in Russia’s capital city said that the city’s traffic nightmares have worsened in the last three years, and the city ranked worst on the average duration of its traffic jams. It’s got to be nerve-racking to know that once you hit traffic, the average expected delay is nearly two-and-a-half hours! At least people are somewhat following lanes here behind the street view car.

3: Johannesburg

South Africa’s largest city of Johannesburg ranks the highest amongst those cities commuters believe have worsened over the past three years. Eighty percent of those surveyed agreed that the traffic situation isn’t getting any better, and the city scored 97 points out of 100 on the scale of the emotional and economic toll of commuting. We have access to the 45° Imagery on Google Maps this time to get a closer look, and sure enough the delays are easy to find.

2: Mexico City

Mexico’s capital city scored a nearly “perfect” 99 out 100 on the survey. More than half of the commuters surveyed say that traffic has negatively affected their school or job performance. Just like before, it doesn’t take long to find some backups with Google’s street view car. Looks like we could be here a while.

1: Beijing

Ranking the highest (or worst) on our list is China’s capital city of Beijing, which is home to nearly 20 million people. Even outside of rush hour, many roads to and from Beijing remain clogged with traffic. The daily rush in traffic also causes air quality issues around the city; so much so that during the 2008 Olympic games, drivers were only allowed to drive on either even or odd days (based on their license plate number). Today, Beijing has a limit on how many license plates they issue a month to try to control the number of vehicles, and non-Beijing plated cars are banned from entering certain areas of the city during rush hour.

Beijing also holds the record for the world’s worst traffic jam… ever! In 2010, a clog between Beijing and Jining stretched for 100 kilometres (62 miles), and lasted nearly a month! Needless to say it took a large effort from hundreds of police to keep order. Hoping to catch a glimpse from Google, all we could find on the imagery today was this little congestion near the Great Wall.

Locations: China, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Crowds, Other Vehicles, Street Views

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In February 2012, Google added Moscow and St. Petersburg to their roster of Street View cities, but the major Russian-language search engine, Yandex, beat them to it by a couple of years. In fact, Yandex likely has the largest repository of street-level imagery outside of Google and Bing with coverage in 150 major Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian cities. Here, we can see such sights as the historic museums of Khabarovsk in the far east and historic wooded churches such as this one in the Arctic city of Arkhangelsk.

Of course, if you like good old-fashioned oppressively bleak Soviet-era apartment blocks, you can see plenty of those, too.

Yandex’s coverage also extends into Kazakhstan, where the capital of Astana has seen a massive amount of opulent new construction since it was designated capital in 1997. The sprawling parliament complex, for example, looks pristine. On the opposite end of the capital district, the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre was built in 2006 in the form of a giant transparent tent covering a whopping 14 hectares (35 acres).

Yandex also beat Google to the punch in reaching Turkey. Along the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, we’re able to see both Europe on the left and Asia on the right.

Speaking of Turkey, the website Dunya360 also provides street-level imagery, but only for the Turkish mountain town of Göynük (population 4,900), known for its steep, narrow cobblestone streets.

Also specialising in single-city imagery is iErbil, the major English-language web portal for Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The ultra high-resolution imagery covers numerous locations throughout the city, including the towering statue of the 13th century historian Ibn al-Mustafwi that sits atop city’s historic citadel.

Other major attractions available on iErbil imagery include the 922-year-old Mudhafaria Minaret and the massive gate that welcomes visitors to Shanadar Park (note the tourist tramway in the background).

We end this part of the tour with the Polish site Zumi, which has imagery for the central business district of Poland’s major cities. Among the sights to be seen here are Warsaw’s massive Palace of Culture and Science (the eighth tallest building in the EU) and the sprawling Main Market Square of Krakow. Dating back to the 13th century, it remains the largest mediaeval town square in Europe.

ED: Since this article was submitted just last week, Google have only gone and released imagery in Poland! Insert your own Big Brother joke here.

Locations: Iraq, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Street Views, Structures

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Beauvais Airport, Paris

Paris-Beauvais is an interesting airport because it’s really not one of Paris’s main airports. Unlike the relative proximity Charles de Gaulle and Orly have to the centre of Paris, Beauvais is located 85 km outside the city. Smaller, low-cost airlines use Beauvais as a way to get passengers near(ish) Paris without having to deal with the prices of flying directly into the city. The frommers.com article calls Beauvais’s terminal “the pits”, and likens it to a “general half-tent, half-warehouse atmosphere.” Sounds great. And you’ve still got an hour to go before you get to the city!

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Terminal 3, Paris

It may be Paris’s best known airport, but Charles de Gaulle Airport didn’t make it away unscathed. Their terminal 3 made the list ranked as the 4th worst terminal in the world. Like Beauvais, it has also been compared to sleeping in a warehouse, a fact that could be attested to by the large homeless population that lives here.

Sheremetyevo Airport Terminal B & C, Moscow

Moscow’s largest airport made the list at number 3 with terminals B and C. Some of the reviews over at sleepinginairports.com said that “the atmosphere in the terminal building is awful”, it’s “dark like a cave”, and just plain dirty. One commenter says “If Putin really wants to clean up his country, this is where he should start”.

All three major airports, New York City

Not good news for passengers flying through New York – all three of New York City’s major airports made the list of world’s worst airport terminals. Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport clocked in at number 7, mainly because of the location of security checkpoints before each pier. If you want to get food, your choices are limited unless you liked to get frisked.

New York LaGuardia Airport‘s US Airways Terminal drops in at number 6 on the list, and frommers.com calls it “dull and sad” with limited options for food and services. Not what you would expect at one of America’s top national airports.

New York JFK Airport‘s Terminal 3 made the number 1 spot on the list of world’s worst terminals. Why? Frommers says: “Terminal 3 is the worst single airport terminal in America, and probably in the Western world. Even Delta acknowledges this: they’re tearing it down and replacing it with a giant glass structure connected to the nearby Terminal 4. It’s unsalvageable.” Ouch.

In stark contrast, New York JFK Airport Terminal 5 was rated number 5 on the list of best airport terminals in the world. Flyers can thank the airline JetBlue for providing new, modern services and really doing a good job offering a comfortable layover opportunity. It’s also been said that terminal 5 has the best airport food court in New York City.

What are your worst (or best) airport terminals to fly to?

Read more about these terminals see the full list at frommer.com.

Locations: France, New York, Russia / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Structures

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The Street View car has come fairly close to several fires over the years, and many remain to be seen – such as this sidewalk garbage fire in a Marseilles underpass which has filled the air with acrid black smoke, or this small roadside brush fire midway between Cardiff and Newport, Wales.

In Sao Paulo, this petrol station is nearly obscured completely by the smoke from a car fire.

The most inflammatory encounters for the Street View car, however, may be these large roadside fires in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa and Chiapas, Mexico.

I wonder if they’ve tried putting these fires out with the world’s largest fire hydrant? Then again, it probably wouldn’t help, seeing as how as it’s located over in Columbia, South Carolina. Besides, the Street View Car in general has bad luck with hydrants.

Fortunately, there are usually emergency workers on the case. Here in Wiesbaden, Germany, an upper-level house fire is being attended to by a number of fire trucks.

At Philadelphia International Airport, this burned-out husk of an airplane sits in a paved circle. The helpless victim of firefighter training, it joins its comrade at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base.¹

This small brush fire on the North Island of New Zealand was likely set deliberately as part of the annual process of getting the land ready for the season’s planting, and this field fire in Bulgaria is also deliberate. This other brush fire in Botswana captured by the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, however, appears to be far more dangerous.

Then there are full-on forest fires. In the wilderness of the Northwest Territories, this forest fire is caught in the heat of the moment, sending a giant plume of smoke into the air that can be seen over 20 miles (30 km) away.

Just as ominous is this massive fire in the far east of Russia, seen here blazing a path toward the Pacific Ocean.

What’s worse than an out-of-control wildfire? Try three, as captured here in Cameroon.

Finally, here’s the Street View car getting incredibly meta, as it takes a picture of someone taking a picture of a fire along the South African coast.

Locations: Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Florida, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Northwest Territories, Pennsylvania, Russia, South Africa, South Carolina, Wales / Categories: Aircraft, Natural Landmarks, Other Vehicles, Street Views

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Approximately the size of Austria, Novaya Zemlya consists of two main islands, Severny (northern) and Yuzhny (southern), along with numerous smaller islands. The archipelago is actually a northern extension of the Ural Mountains, from which it derives its long, skinny shape.

The entire archipelago can get sealed in by ice for much of the year. Google Earth imagery captured this massive wall of ice choking off the west end of this fjord. On the east side of Novaya Zemlya, imagery taken at a different time shows pack ice breaking up and slowly heading out into the Kara Sea.

Novaya Zemlya was covered for millennia by a glacial ice sheet. As the ice sheet advanced over the islands, it scoured the bedrock below, leaving giant parallel striations and scrapes across the landscape eventually filled by rivers and creeks. When these creeks freeze, it gives the impression from above of snow-covered tree branches or tinsel hanging from a Christmas tree.

On Yuzhny Island, we see a drumlin field – parallel mounds of glacial till left behind by the advancing ice.

Severny Island is nearly completely covered in glacial ice to this day. Here, we see a cluster of glaciers come together as they flow toward the Barents Sea. The black stripes are moraines; lines of soil and debris scraped off the mountainside. Once the glacial ice reaches the sea, icebergs calve from the glacier’s tongue into the water.

At the northern tip of Severny Island lies Cape Zhelaniya, the northeasternmost point of Europe at 76°57′N, 68°34′E. The Soviet Union constructed a small base here that was actually shelled by the German Navy during World War II. During the Cold War, the cape became a secret station for experimental nuclear tests, and later a weather station. The station’s buildings at the west end of the cape are still intact.

Amazingly, there are over 2,700 people living in Novaya Zemlya, of which 2,600 live in the only major settlement, Belushya Guba. Largely home to military personnel and their families, the town is being looked to as a future oil and mining hub as Arctic shipping lanes develop. Just to the northeast of Belushya Guba is the major airport of the archipelago at Rogachevo, which receives two scheduled flights from the mainland each week. Rogachevo was founded in the 1950s as a staging base for long-range bombing missions.

While there isn’t a large amount of high-resolution imagery for the islands, there are some goodies to be found, such as the remains of Cold War-era buildings at Bashmachnyy, where old base buildings can be seen falling apart as they are slowly reclaimed by the wind, ice and snow.

Most infamously, Novaya Zemlya was home to the most powerful nuclear explosion ever recorded: the 1961 detonation of the Tsar Bomba. The 27-ton bomb produced a 50-megaton blast that obliterated everything within a 55km (34 mile) range and broke windows 90km (56 miles) away. 50 years on, the massive black scar left by the bomb can still be seen. At the centre of the scar lies this crater-shaped lake.

Today, Novaya Zemlya is becoming popular with cruise ships looking to catch glimpses of the isolated polar bear population that inhabit the islands, as well as their mountains and glaciers. For now, however, Novaya Zemlya remains mostly a military outpost at the edge of Europe.

Locations: Russia /

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Take Monaco, for instance, where the cameras approach the eastern border only to be greeted with this giant abstract sculpture at the crossing (or is that just Monaco giving a massive middle-finger to Google’s camera?).

The western entrance to Monaco is quite stunning, with the road descending into the principality as cliffs loom overhead.

Moving south into the Pyrenees, we reach the border of Andorra, where we can sneak a peek into the ski resort of Pas de la Casa, including some oddly-coloured apartments on the hillside.

For sheer impressiveness, however, it’s hard to beat the sight of the Rock of Gibraltar looming over the Spanish border at La Linea while a thunderstorm prepares to hit overhead:

The prize for ‘Most Ornate Entrance Captured on Street View’ might have to go to the border between Rimini, Italy and Serravalle, San Marino, where the microstate has constructed a pedestrian overpass and an observation tower for tourists, leading into a major shopping district. The other main entrance to San Marino would probably be described as ‘quaint’ by comparison.

The absurdly complicated Dutch-Belgian border at Baarle (documented previously on Google Sightseeing) is likely to have presented special challenges to the Street View team. However, they have cleverly managed to avoid publishing any images captured on Belgian soil – despite examples such as this, where the camera car must drive from Holland at one end of the block, across a tiny sliver of Belgium, and back to Holland at the other end.

Baarle’s not the only town cut in half in Street View. Here’s a place where you park in France to dine at a cafe in Luxembourg:

Near the tri-point of Italy, Austria and Slovenia, we get this multi-national flag arrangement at an old Austrian customs building. Further into the Alps, the Street View car camera ends its trip at the ski resort of Nassfeld, where one of the ski lifts lies right next to a field of grazing cattle.

The lone glimpse of Russian soil captured so far on Street View is the view across a small lake from Norway (the only place you can actually drive south into Russia from), where we get a blurry view of a building on a hill overlooking the lake. Hmm, a regular house, or a Cold War spy shanty? You be the judge…

South Africa is the only African country so far visited by Street View, but sadly most of the border shots are not particularly notable. For example, the images simply stop by a fence on the middle of the road at the border with Swaziland, while the border with Botswana couldn’t be any more different, merely possessing a single stop sign.

We end our forbidden borderland odyssey with a glimpse from Singapore across the Straits of Johor to downtown Johor Bahru.

With luck, one day we’ll be able to get a glimpse beyond those borders as Street View continues to roll out coverage in countries across the globe. (Then we can finally find out just what it is they’re trying to hide from us…)

Locations: Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Crown Dependencies, France, Italy, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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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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The Russian Woodpecker was an over-the-horizon (OTH) radar system used during the later years of the Cold War. Broadcast towers used for its shortwave signals are still in place near Chernobyl.

The Woodpecker nickname derived from the loud and repetitive signals being broadcast. They were so powerful that they interfered with radio signals and telecommunications around the world, from their beginning in 1976 to when they ceased at the end of 1989 when the Soviet Union started to collapse.

There were various conspiracy theories about the source of the sound, from the orthodox (radio jamming or submarine communications) to the bizarre (global mind control or aliens). However, NATO forces quickly realised that it was an OTH system, and were even able to photograph the massive arrays of 150m tall antennas, which they dubbed the Steel Yard, and nearby buildings, which look quite overgrown now.

The proximity to Chernobyl means this location is likely permanently abandoned, though local amateur radio enthusiasts have been known to rig their own systems up to the antennas!

Officially named Duga-3, the system was completed by a receiving facility approximately 60km away from the transmitter. Unfortunately this area is only covered by very low-resolution imagery.

A second Duga-3 system was installed in Siberia – again a pair of facilities 60km apart, though most of the installations have been dismantled. However, if you zoom in, there appear to be large collections of military vehicles at both locations.

This system was intended to cover any gaps in the original system’s OTH radar detection of incoming missiles from the USA.

These systems followed on from prototypes Duga-1 and Duga-2 which were built and tested in southern Ukraine. Little evidence of these systems remains, but there is an interesting circular formation nearby.

Can anyone find any other top-secret shortwave systems elsewhere in the world?

Learn more about the Russian Woodpecker at Wikipedia and Passing Strangeness.

Thanks to Mada.

Locations: Russia, Ukraine / Categories: Abandoned, Structures, Towers, Weirdness

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On August 23rd 2010, for the first time in over four years, the tone was once more interrupted – to be replaced with a Russian voice that said:

UVB-76, UVB-76 – 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 – 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4 – (repeated twice)

While it is believed that UVB-76 is a specialised Numbers Station (used to transmit encoded messages to spies) the messages themselves have never yet been decoded – although perhaps all that is about to change…

The names used in the message are used in some Russian spelling alphabets, and spell out the first word – “naimina”, which one commenter at the UVB-76 blog translated as “on names”. Another commenter suggests that “74 14 35 74″ could be interpreted as longitude and latitude coordinates: 74.14N 35.74E.

So why would UVB-76 be broadcasting a geographical location in the middle of the Barents sea? How about a Russian anti-aircraft missile launch revealed on the same day:

The Russian Air Force is together with Air Defence units preparing a shooting exercise with the S-300 anti-Aircraft missile system from the island of Kildin in the Barents Sea.

Although, that all seems a bit ridiculously obvious, doesn’t it? The Russians are well aware that there are people continually monitoring this broadcast – so why is it so easy to connect the broadcast with the activities of the Russian armed forces?

In the last 2 days, more voices transmissions have come from UVB-76, as well as grumbles, knocks, shuffles, beeps, and a completely new buzzing noise, that nearly drowned out the sound of the original buzzer altogether.

So what does it all mean? Is someone just checking the system still works, or is this the precursor to impending total annihilation?

There’s lots more information about the mysterious UVB-76 at Wikipedia.

Thanks to uvb-76.blogspot.com via @rodti.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings, Weirdness

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