According to Wikipedia there are 37 documented places with a single resident. There may of course be many more not yet listed on Wikipedia, so if you know of one, leave a comment here and I might just edit the Wikipedia page myself!

Onwards to our whirlwind tour, are you ready? Let’s go!

In Canada, there the towns of Raley and Masinasin in Alberta; and in Saskatchewan the towns of Crichton, Estuary, Loomis Ravenscrag, South Fork and Vidora

To Estonia next, and the villages of Koipsi and Rammu which are on neighbouring islands.

The Faroe Islands are next with Nesvík and Mjørkadalur.

Onwards to France and the village of Rochefourchat, with its single house and church. Moving south to New Zealand and the village of Cass. Back North to Polana in Poland and Naimakka, a weather station, in Sweden (you can read about Naimakka’s resident via Google Translate).

To England next with Hilbre Island and Steep Holm (we’re half way through, hope you can keep up!) Scotland is next on the list with Eilean Donan (once home to Connor MacLeod), Forewick Holm, Innis Chonan, Sanda and Shuna.

Finally, to the final country on our tour, the United States, where the state of Maine has Criehaven and Hibberts Gore, Minnesota has Kiel Township and the oddly named Township 157-30, New Hampshire has Dix’s Grant and Green’s Grant. Then there’s Bonanza in Utah, Hanks in North Dakota, Hobart Bay in Alaska, Holy City in California, Laurier in Washington state, Monowi in Nebraska and last, but by no means least, Oil Springs Reservation in New York state.

Most of the places we visited today have an entry in Wikipedia, where you can usually find more information about what happened to these places. Many of the towns are on the verge of becoming proper ghost towns, but for people in others there is a strange sense of pride that comes from being the only resident.

Locations: Alaska, Alberta, California, England, Estonia, Faroe Islands, France, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, New Zealand, Poland, Saskatchewan, Scotland, Sweden, Utah, Washington, Wyoming / Categories: Abandoned, Weirdness

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Titanic was owned by the White Star Line shipping company and at 269m (882 ft) in length she was the world’s largest passenger liner in service at the time. She was one of three Olympic class ocean liners commissioned by the company, the other two being the HMHS Britannic (who was sunk after 11 months service during WWI) and their older sibling, RMS Olympic (who served a long career, earning the nickname “Old Reliable”).

KML file via GPSed.com

All three of the Olympic class liners were built by Harland and Wolff (who are still in business) in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The drydock where the ship was fitted out has been preserved as a museum to this day, and the 259m long space gives us a clear view of the massive ‘physical footprint of the Titanic’.

Nearby we can see Belfast’s iconic twin shipbuilding gantry cranes Samson and Goliath (who are owned by Harland & Wolff). By comparison the drydock beneath these 70m (229 ft) tall cranes is 556m (1,824 ft) long – in fact it’s the largest drydock in the world.¹

Also nearby is the SS Nomadic – a ship built by Harland and Wolff as a tender for Olympic and Titanic. Today she is the last surviving White Star Line vessel in the world. In the aerial imagery here she is not much more than a hull, but Harland and Wolff have in the past few months completed an initial phase of restoration that replaced the missing bridge and flying bridge decks, as seen in this ground level photo.

Soon after Titanic sank, proposals were made to salvage her wreck (despite the fact that her exact location was unknown). Of course even if divers had been able to somehow locate the wreck, they couldn’t get anywhere near deep enough to actually retrieve anything.

Despite repeated attempts to locate her, Titanic remained resolutely lost for the next 73 years, until she was finally found by a team led by Dr. Robert D. Ballard on 1 September 1985.

Titanic is in two main pieces 600km (370 miles) south-east of Newfoundland. The bow is located here, and the stern is here, about 600m (1,970 ft) to the south.

James “deep sea diver” Cameron and his digital effects team recently created a new animation of how they believe Titanic collided with the iceberg, sank, and reached the ocean floor².

There are various museums around the world that have items on display that have been recovered from the wreck of Titanic, including the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia; the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; the Sea City Museum in Southampton; the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool; the Titanic Historical Society’s museum in Massachusetts; and there’s a permanent exhibition of Titanic artefacts at the Luxor in Las Vegas.

While not strictly a museum, the White Swan Hotel, Alnwick, has an “Olympic Suite” which is decorated using paneling, mirrors, stained glass windows and other furnishings removed from the RMS Olympic‘s first class lounge when she was being dismantled in 1936. The first class lounge on Olympic was identical to that of Titanic so a visit here could potentially be a great way of experiencing Titanic‘s splendour.

Meanwhile, in Inverness, Scotland, this guy (the one next to Mater) has built a 100 ft Titantic replica out of a couple of old caravans and a shed. Sadly it seems that he was refused planning permission for the model, which now faces an uncertain future. I believe the model has been built on the other side of his house, so it isn’t visible on Street View, but could that be it in the satellite imagery?

Meanwhile, the wreck of Titanic continues to decay at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, losing an estimated 100 kilos of hull per day to iron-eating bacteria, and within time she will disappear into the seabed completely.

Locations: England, New York, Northern Ireland / Categories: Monuments, Movie Locations, Street Views, Structures, Towers, Watercraft

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Likely no death in music history shocked the world as did the murder of John Lennon on the steps of The Dakota apartment building in New York on 8 December 1980. Each year on that anniversary, a memorial procession is held in front of the building led by Yoko Ono that ends across the street at the appropriately named Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park. The Dakota itself is a rather stately building from the 1880s and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

The hazards of constant touring and travel mean that some of our musical heroes meet their demise on tour – such as Buddy Holly. And then there are those who simply run into misfortune on the way home from a night out, as did T. Rex’s Marc Bolan in 1977 when low tire pressure in the vehicle in which he was a passenger resulted in a crash with a tree in Queen’s Ride, Barnes. Fans quickly turned the site into an impromptu shrine, and tributes continue to arrive to this day.

Others who saw their time on Earth end in the midst of touring include Metallica’s Cliff Burton (who was killed in 1986 when he was thrown through the window of an overturning tour bus on this stretch of rural Swedish roadway), and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines – who all perished when their chartered plane crashed in this forest near the Mississippi-Louisiana border.

Perhaps the most infamous residence in rock history was the flat at 9 Curzon Square, Mayfair, London owned by Harry Nilsson. The cursed house was often lent by Nilsson to other musician friends while he was on tour, two of whom died while staying there: ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot in 1974 (and no, she didn’t choke to death on a ham sandwich) and Who drummer Keith Moon in 1978¹. Further to the north in London we find the Camden Square home of Amy Winehouse where she died in 2011.

Sadly, while we in the midst of compiling this post, another music legend, Whitney Houston, passed away in her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on 11 February 2012 at the age of 48.

When famous musicians pass on, places like these can become rather busy memorial sites, often seeing thousands of visitors each year making pilgrimages in honour of their fallen heroes. The area surrounding the tomb of Jim Morrison at Paris’ Père Lachaise Cemetery, for example, became a haven for large crowds, vandalism, drunken parties, and even occult rituals over the years; at one point the grave had to be covered in stone in order to prevent attempts at digging up Morrison’s body.

Also in Paris sits this wall outside the longtime home of legendary French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. In the two-plus decades since Gainsbourg’s death, the wall has been consistently covered in graffiti, including poems, lyrics, and images of Gainsbourg.

There are also impromptu memorial sites that only last for a few days or weeks. Street View just happened to be travelling through Detroit in July 2009 shortly after Michael Jackson died, and captured Hitsville USA² – the former headquarters of Motown Records where the Jackson family got their start in the record business (now a museum) – which was temporarily swathed in an array of tributes and offerings.

Have you found other infamous music haunts such as these on Google Maps? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below.

Locations: California, England, France, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Sweden / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Street Views, Weirdness

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Overlooking the village of Oare, the small wood wasn’t created by aliens (or by people pretending to be aliens), but by Lady Keswick, the owner of Oare House.

In 1999, following the death of her two brothers, Lady Keswick had 1,000 Hawthorn trees planted in their memory. The trees were chosen in two varieties – one with dark pink and one with pale pink flowers – and with the help of an Oxford-based landscape consultants, were planted in a acre-large heart-shaped arrangement.

The wood is yet to fully bloom, but when it does, it will light up the hillside in a blaze of pink that will stand as a beautiful tribute to Lady Keswick’s brothers.

Via gov.uk and the to the BBC.

P.S. Apologies for this site’s extended outage over the past 24 hours, we’ll be giving our web host a serious talking to.

Locations: England / Categories: Large Type, Monuments

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Above is Estadio Lluís Sitjar in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Built in 1945, for over half a century the 18,000 seat stadium was the home of football club RCD Mallorca. The stadium has sat unused since 2007, but the word ‘Mallorca‘ can still be plainly seen spelled out in the seats. The field of play, however, is already in a sad state.

On another populous Spanish island, Gran Canaria, lies Estadio Insular, which was the home of UD Las Palmas. Built in the same year as Lluís Sitjar, the 21,000 seater was abandoned four years earlier. Grass and trees are already rooting themselves in the stands, and the walls are covered in graffiti.

Stade des Charmilles in Geneva was the site of five FIFA World Cup games in 1954. Much of the facility was dismantled in 2002 and the field is completely barren, but the grandstands remain in place. In the rival city of Zurich, the demolished Hardturm also hosted World Cup games. Satellite imagery shows the shells of the grandstand are still intact, and Street View shows the rubble surrounding it.

In Germany, Gelsenkirchen’s Parkstadion was the home of the Bundesliga’s Schalke 04 from 1973 to 2001. Since then, about one-half of the seating has been removed, but the rest remains.

The largest abandoned stadium seen on Google Maps is the Estadio Fonte Nova in Salvador, Brazil. Originally built to a capacity of 66,080, the stadium was expanded to a monstrous 110,000 seats in 1971. Tragedy struck Fonte Nova in 2007, when an upper terrace collapsed during a Third Division championship final, killing seven spectators and injuring forty. The stadium was immediately closed. Since this imagery was captured, Fonte Nova has been demolished.

At one point the largest arena in the Czech Republic, Brno’s Stadion Za Lužánkami has sat in state for the past decade. Not only is the old playing field easy to make out, but even the goalposts are still standing. Around the edges, though, trees up to 3 metres high have sprouted in the bleachers.

Not all abandoned stadiums are left to rot. The Dell, the former home of English side Southampton, was redeveloped as a housing estate after its 2001 closure. Not only does the estate retain the shape of the original stadium, but all of the apartment blocks are named for famous Saints players.

Naturally, there aren’t only modern abandoned arenas to be found on Google Maps. The Plaza de Toros in Cartagena, Spain has been abandoned for nearly a century. Built on top of an ancient Roman arena, the location is set to be the home of a new Roman museum. Over in Merida, this ancient amphitheatre dates all the way back to 25 BC. The gladiator pit is exposed in the middle of the arena.

We end the first part of our tour in South Africa, where in Cape Town, Greenpoint Stadium was torn down to make way for the neighbouring Cape Town Stadium in advance of the 2010 World Cup¹. Here we see demolition crews working to dismantle the arena. The north grandstand, however, remains standing.

Read part two of our abandoned stadium tour: Abandoned Stadiums of the United States.

Locations: Brazil, Czech Republic, England, Germany, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland / Categories: Abandoned, Stadiums and Sport

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The new Olympic Stadium was completed earlier this year and has a capacity of around 80,000 spectators.

After the Olympics and Paralympics are over it will be converted to a football stadium for use by West Ham United who won the right to use it after a controversial court battle with other clubs. The track and field facilities will be retained and the stadium will host the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

The Olympic Zone will be the focal point of the Games and features a number of other new facilities including the Aquatics Centre, the velopark (which includes the velodrome and outdoor road and BMX circuits) and the basketball arena.

While it’s hard to find good Street View images, the elevated section of the A12 gives us a glimpse of the construction site. It reveals the swooping shape of the velodrome and the ridged roof of the basketball arena.

We also get a very distant view of the stadium and Aquatics Centre.

The Zone also includes a handball arena and two hockey stadiums in this area which is shown full of construction materials. A former greyhound racing facility may serve as the media centre for the Games.

The eastern side of the development features the Athletes’ Village – a number of accommodation buildings for the 10,000-plus athletes and their team officials. After the Games they will be taken over by the city of Stratford which is being extensively redeveloped.

Further south, the ‘River Zone’ will feature four venues along the Thames, including the O2 Arena¹, which will be used for gymnastics. The Excel Arena will house competition in seven sports including boxing, table tennis and judo. The historic Royal park in Greenwich will host all equestrian events while all shooting events will take place the Royal Artillery Barracks².

While a number of other pre-existing venues scattered across London will be used for various sports, in some cases the Games organisers are creating venues in non-traditional but iconic locations. For example, a temporary 15,000 seat beach volleyball stadium will be built in Horseguards Parade which normally plays host to the Trooping of the Colour.

The wide green expanse of Lord’s Cricket Ground will be converted to an archery venue with seating for close to 7,000 spectators.

There are several venues outside the city as well, including the Lee Valley White Water Centre which we see here under construction prior to its opening for canoe/kayak events a year ago.

For the past couple of Olympics, Google has released brand-new satellite and Street View imagery shortly before the Games, so we’ll plan to do a more detailed post next summer. If they can do Street View on the slopes at Whistler, I hope the next step forward is to strap a camera to a kayak and send it down the whitewater course!

Read more about the 2012 Olympic venues at Wikipedia and at the London 2012 site.

Locations: England / Categories: Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views, Structures

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Windsor

The English Windsor is about 40km west of London. Its Castle, shown above, is justly famous – built by William the Conqueror and still used regularly by the royal family, it is both the largest inhabited castle in the world, and the palace which has been occupied for the longest period of time. We visited it back in 2006.

It bears little resemblance to Windsor, Ontario, which is most often in the news for its dwindling number of car manufacturing plants, and its increasing number of casinos designed to draw American tourists across the border from Detroit.

Cornwall

Cornwall, in England’s far south-west, is a holiday-makers paradise, with pristine beaches, soaring cliffs and picturesque villages, and is of course home to Land’s End.

It would be hard to find any similarities with Cornwall, Ontario, which has a reputation as a rough-edged town polluted by industrial waste and popular with those wanting to smuggle cigarettes across the nearby US border.

One advantage of the toxic waste dumps is that they can apparently serve as ski hills in the winter!

Waterloo

Waterloo is a municipality in Belgium where the famous Battle of Waterloo saw Napoleon’s French army defeated in 1815. A large monument marks the battleground.

The only battle of note in Waterloo, Ontario, is the one for control of the smart-phone market, with Blackberry-manufacturer RIM being based here.

Athens

The Greek capital of Athens is often called ‘the cradle of Western civilisation’ It is home to countless historic buildings and treasures, and was the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

It bears little resemblance to Athens, Ontario, which is a small farming town of 3,000 people, seemingly most famous for its corn festival held every summer. It also has a number of pleasant murals of rural life.

Tweed

The River Tweed is a bucolic waterway in the Scottish borders region. It attracts anglers from all over the world for its renowned salmon fishing.

Tweed, Ontario, is mainly noted for its amusingly-decorated fire hydrants. It was also rumoured to be a hiding place for Elvis by those who believe his death was faked, although – surprisingly – no real evidence of this has ever surfaced.

Khartum

Khartoum is the bustling capital of Sudan, with a turbulent and often lawless history on the banks of the Nile. Recent development has been spurred by income from the country’s oil wells.

It could in no way be confused with Khartum, Ontario, which is, well … not much really. If anything it’s a ghost town. It is identified on the map and there are couple of roadside signs with the town’s name, but there’s nothing between the two signs that could really define it as a community. How it got the name, we have no idea!

If you have a favourite namesake, send it to us through our submission form and it might be included in a future post!

Locations: England, Greece, Ontario, Scotland, Sudan / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Street Views, Weirdness

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Reader Dave Schubert identifies the plane as being in an engine test stand. According to Google Earth’s historical imagery feature this image was taken on the 27th of June 2010, which is interesting as Concorde was retired in 2003 – so it’s perhaps a little strange that they would be testing the engines.

Next, to Canada’s busiest airport, Toronto Pearson. However, we’re looking at a very American icon – the Blue Angels aerobatic team.

More formally known as the Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, these planes were spotted by Kevin Hodgson. The six F/A-18 Hornets are seen parked near to a seventh plane, a two-seater F/A-18B that can be used as a backup plane if necessary. We can also see the C-130T Hercules nicknamed Fat Albert, which carries support personnel, spare parts and technical equipment.

You can read more about the Blue Angels at their official site, and at Wikipedia.

Given the recent situation in Libya, it may be a good thing that eight C-130 Hercules that were ordered by the Gaddafi regime are stuck in the southern US state of Georgia.

The desert-camouflaged planes were ordered and built at this Lockheed plant at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in the early 1970s. However before they could be delivered, the US imposed sanctions on Libya.

Because they are technically the property of the Libyan government, the planes cannot be moved, so they sit on flat tires, surrounded by weeds in the distant reaches of the base. Thanks to Cafe de Unie, SecretAgent Man and Jonathan Peterson for sending this one in.

Unused planes can be a problem for any airport, though at Hot Springs in Arkansas they park them a little more neatly and efficiently than they do at Manas Airport in Kyrgyzstan or Wilson Airport in Kenya. Thanks to ‘Me’, nga and Bryan Johnson for these.

Moving on to crashed planes (nervous flyers should probably stop reading at this point!), we start with a couple of real downed planes. This Curtis C-46F Commando crashed in November 1979, shortly after taking off from Churchill in northern Canada.

It was reported to us by Lindsay Marshall, and airliners.net has some good pictures. Apparently the inside has been setup with a picnic table, and is a local tourist attraction.

Just a few months ago, two people unfortunately lost their lives when their small plane crashed into Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin. New satellite imagery just happened to capture a crane recovering the wreckage. Thanks to milwhcky for reporting this one via Virtual Globetrotting.

Hollywood is fond of creating its own plane crashes, and the set from 2005′s War of the Worlds is now part of Universal Studio’s tour, as shown in this YouTube video. Thanks to Anthony Moore for the suggestion.

The studio spent $2million to bring an unused 747 to the lot, carefully broke it apart and then built the houses affected by the crash in the movie. Google’s 45-degree imagery allows us to see the set from different perspectives, including engines lying next to a house, seats in the ripped apart cabin, and the charred tail section.

Another apparently horrific plane crash was spotted by Bryan Johnson at the former Alameda Naval Air Station near San Francisco.

Some of the 45-degree imagery was apparently taken on a different day, and reveals crowds of people and emergency vehicles.

However, we can also see lots of technical equipment, including a camera crane, so it’s clear that this isn’t a real crash, and Geek.com reveals that it is, in fact, a set for the TV show Trauma.

We had previously featured Alameda for its role in a Matrix film, though personally I’m hoping that someday we’ll see images of the Mythbusters team who film regularly at this location.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this post. Please use the suggestion form if you know if interesting locations that you think we should feature.

Locations: Arkansas, California, England, Georgia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Manitoba, Ontario / Categories: Abandoned, Aircraft, Movie Locations, Shadows

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Even from other angles, which reveal its true shape, the Wrekin still seems to be an aberration in the landscape: it emerges abruptly from the surrounding plain, as if it had erupted from the earth.

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Sadly, geologists tell us that the Wrekin is not a real volcano, although it was formed from volcanic rock hundreds of millions of years ago. Still, the view from the summit is spectacular, and you don’t even need to leave your sofa to see it, since the Street View cameras have made it to the top:

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As an isolated peak, the Wrekin was a perfect vantage point for the Cornovii, an Iron Age tribe who built a hillfort on its summit. The fort was ultimately destroyed by the Romans, who had built the city of Viroconium close to the hill. The Roman city’s ruins can still be seen today, and it is easy to imagine how threatening the Wrekin must have looked to the soldiers garrisoned there (A.E. Housman evoked that idea beautifully in his poem A Shropshire Lad).

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The Wrekin’s claim to volcanohood may be unfounded, but Salopian folklore provides a better explanation for its peculiar nature. Legend tells that a giant once stomped toward Shrewsbury, carrying a mound of earth on his spade with which he intended to destroy the city. Meeting a cobbler, who was carrying a sack of shoes for repair, the giant asked how far it was to Shrewsbury. The wily cobbler opened his sack and said “So far away that I’ve worn out all these shoes since I left”. Demoralised, the giant gave up and dumped the earth upon the ground … thus forming the Wrekin. The giant is honoured by an enormous fibreglass statue in Telford Town Park. You can glimpse him through these trees…

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However it got there, the Wrekin has become a symbol of the local area, and it was once traditional at Salopian gatherings to offer a toast to “all friends round the Wrekin”!

Locations: England / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Volcanoes

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Ye Olde Google Maps

Before there was Google Maps, there was the wonderfully detailed Agas Map of 1561¹, and before there was Street View, there was Wenceslas Hollar’s incredible panoramic masterpiece Long View of London (1647), which you can view a small section of, or you can download the entire gigantic image from this page (be warned, it’s 73MB!)²

Detail of the Globe theatre from Long View of London by Wenceslas Hollar.

While many of the streets recorded in these drawings survive today, the buildings themselves are almost all gone, thanks to the Great Fire of London of 1666. But despite the ravages of “devouring time”, a few places remain that Shakespeare would have seen with his own eyes. In this post, I’ll ignore the large-scale survivors such as the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, and focus instead on some hidden gems.

The Globe Theatre

Tourists are familiar with the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the South Bank, but less obvious are the foundations of the original building, which archaeologists discovered underneath a car park a couple of hundred yards up the road. The remains have since been reburied, but you can see a curved line that marks the location of the theatre’s round walls.

So this is where Hamlet, Julius Caesar and King Lear premiered. Listen: can you almost hear the applause? No? Me neither. But this is the spot.

St Helen’s Bishopsgate

Shakespeare lived in the parish of St Helen’s Bishopsgate during the 1590s and would have known its church well. The Church of St Helen’s has survived the Great Fire, the Blitz, and even an IRA bomb. And here’s a surprise: in the Street View window below, turn to the right, and you’ll find that the church is almost next door to that futuristic London landmark, the Gherkin.

St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell

This archway is St. John’s Gate, part of the Priory of St. John. Shakespeare probably came here many times, because in his day it was occupied by the Master of the Revels, a court official who arranged performances for the monarch and censored play manuscripts. Today it belongs to the Museum of the Order of St. John.

London Stone

Do you see the little barred enclosure set into the bottom of this abandoned retail building?

If you could peer through the bars you’d see a lump of rough-hewn rock with some grooves on top. This is the enigmatic London Stone. No-one is certain of its age or its original purpose, but it has been kept on display for centuries; legend warns that London will be destroyed if the stone is not kept safe. Shakespeare mentions it in Henry VI, Part 2; in his day it was stored in a similar case on a different part of the street. It may soon be moved to the Museum of London.

Fragments of London Wall

Today, the wall that once circled London is almost completely gone, but a few fragments remain to conjure the looming mass that Shakespeare would have seen.

Southwark Cathedral

Finally, Southwark Cathedral would have been a local place of worship for actors at the Globe Theatre; Shakespeare’s brother Edmund and two of his fellow playwrights are buried here. Modern additions have been built onto the cathedral, but its steeple still looks the same as it did in Shakespeare’s time.

So we’ve come full circle, for it was atop that very steeple that Wenceslas Hollar sketched his Long View of London, recording this now vanished world for posterity.

Locations: England / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

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