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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10. While not quite as lofty as its mountainous namesake, diners at Everest enjoy stellar views from the 40th floor of the Stock Exchange building.

An average price of $546 will get you a selection of Chef Joho’s specialties such as “Magret of Mulard Duck, Wild Pine Honey, Marinated Turnips à la Colmarienne” – one of a number of menu items which the menu identifies as “dishes upon which Everest has built its reputation”. Everest has a single Michelin star.

9. It costs just one dollar more for a meal at chef Daniel Boulud’s three-Michelin-starred eponymous restaurant² in Manhattan, shown on Street View undergoing a bit of door repair.

A highlight of the menu appears to be the “Duo of Four Story Hill Farm Poularde Demi-Deuil – Poached Breast with Savoy Cabbage Black Truffle Stuffed Leg, Chestnut, Albufera Sauce”, which is not your average chicken dinner.

8. Back to Chicago³ where Les Nomades ($558 but zero stars) is one of the few on this list that actually deigns to have an exterior sign.

The dessert menu caught my eye, particularly the “Warm chocolate tart with raspberries, white coffee bean ice cream, vanilla froth, chocolate sauce” … though I hope vanilla froth is more appetizing than it sounds.

7. Just two blocks to the north, the same amount of cash gets you a meal at Tru, where the single-star dining is discreetly hidden behind white curtains.

Again I felt compelled to turn to the dessert menu, where I would imagine the $15 “s’more (graham, chocolate, marshmallow)” is somewhat more extravagant than the standard campfire treat that would usually set you back a few cents.

6. Now to California, where Melisse in Los Angeles has an average bill of $576 but no stars. The slightly drab exterior is offset by a luxurious interior with purple walls, crisp white linens and roaring fireplaces.

The wine list runs to 67 pages and is topped off by a Chateau Latour priced at $7,750.

5. To Chicago again where we’ll assume that guests at chef Charlie Trotter’s two-starred eponymous showcase usually don’t arrive in a car with a dirty t-shirt covering the window!

Being vegetarian myself, I’m happy to see a Vegetable Menu on offer, which includes “A Study in Legumes with Collard Greens, Rutabaga & Anise”. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any food, let alone greens and rutabaga, described as “a study” before. Should we be concerned that the average bill here is $666?

4. Less than a mile to the south is our final Chicago stop, and the only three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the city. Alinea’s imposing and cryptic grey exterior is matched by its imposing and cryptic grey website.

Here the average prices start to get truly astronomical. $736 can get you a 20 course meal featuring a hot potato with a cold potato, a black truffle explosion and a “Squab inspired by Miró“.⁴

3. Another eponymous restaurant is that of chef Michael Mina in San Francisco where the average bill is $844.

I couldn’t help noticing that the most expensive item on the menu is remarkably similar to the standard English Sunday lunch of roast beef, mashed potatoes and vegetables. $98 gets you “hay baked côte du boeuf for two, la ratte potato purée, crispy brussels sprouts”. But it’s the drinks menu where the real money is required, with a $250 Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac, or a $25,499 Chateau Lafleur 1945.

Mina has a Michelin star for both this restaurant and the other that carries his name in Las Vegas. He has 16 restaurants across the US.

The king of expensive restaurants is chef Thomas Keller, who operates our top two, on opposite sides of the country. Both have held three Michelin stars since the mid 2000s.

2. In New York, Per Se is located on the fourth floor of the Time Warner building at the south-west corner of Central Park.

With an average bill of $883, the menus change daily, and often include the names of farms and other suppliers of the luxury ingredients. On the day of writing highlights included “Tsar Imperial Osetra Caviar with Applewood Smoked Bacon, Scallop “Blini”, Creamed Spinach, Frisée and Nasturtium Caper Emulsion” and “Blackmore Ranch Australian Wagyu with Crispy Bone Marrow, Potato “Mille-Feuille”, Glazed Heirloom Carrots Watercress Salad and Sauce Bordelaise”. Respectively these cost $75 and $150 on top of the standard $295 prix fixe menu.

If nothing on the 88-page wine menu meets your taste, they will kindly allow you to bring your own wine … for a $90 corkage fee. The most expensive wine appears to be a magnum of Pétrus, which costs $30,250.

There is, of course a private dining room, and should you wish to provide your guests with a gift, there are several options including a collection of salts (French, English, Japanese and Hawaiian), truffle popcorn, or one of Keller’s cookbooks.

1. The most expensive restaurant in the US is tucked away in the tiny Napa Valley town of Yountville. Keller’s The French Laundry occupies a century-old building which was, in the 1920s, actually a steam laundry.

Operating in the same way as Per Se, with unique daily 9-course tasting menus, the average bill at The French Laundry is an astronomical $957. Sample dishes include “Herb-Roasted Salsify with Quail Egg, Black Trumpet Mushrooms, Piedmont Hazelnuts and Garden Mâche” and “Alpaco “Mousse au Chocolat” with Spice Pudding, “Panna Cotta”, Gros Michel Banana and Marcona Almond Glacée”.

While the wine menu is more extensive here (at 111 pages), it has only a handful of wines in the five-figure range. The Pétrus is again the most expensive, at $13,000 for a standard bottle.

If you have the financial resources to enjoy these restaurants you would probably also enjoy our Top 10 Most Expensive Hotel Rooms post from last year.

Locations: California, Illinois, New York / Categories: Buildings, Street Views

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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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Camera facing north

The ever increasing resolution of Google’s imagery has continued to reveal greater detail people’s lives – particularly through the Street View imagery – but this is the first time an aerial photgraph of such a graphic nature has been published on the site.

Camera facing west

We can’t be sure about the details of the scene – there’s no sign of injury from this distance – but the number of police officers and vehicles (both marked and unmarked) suggests that this is unlikely to have been a case of accidental death.

Camera facing south

The location however gives us more indication of what might have happened here. This track forms the apex of an area that is known locally as the “Iron Triangle“². It’s a high crime area in the middle of a city that was in 2007 rated as the 9th most dangerous city in the United States.

There’s nothing to see in the aerial image facing east, but we can have a look from this direction on Street View – of course the imagery was captured on a different day, so nothing is revealed about the crime itself.

Can anyone locate a news report or press release about the incident so we can try and work out what actually happened here? The time stamp on Google Maps claims this image was taken in 2012, but it’s unclear how accurate this is, so a specific date could be hard to pinpoint.

Thanks to @KeirClarke.

Locations: California / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Crowds, Street Views

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We first visited this Santa three years ago but updated Street View imagery gives us a much better look at the bright red 12m tall Saint Nick who is in the process of making his list, and checking it twice. This blog post gives a fascinating glimpse at its origins in Seattle.

Heading to Oxnard, California, we find only the top-half of a Santa who has apparently got a bad headache, judging by the hand position and big frown on his face. Maybe all the cookies, milk and glasses of whisky were too much for him? As vigilant as ever, Google has blurred the faces of the accompanying nutcrackers to protect their identities.

This 6m tall Kris Kringle is actually quite a venerable specimen, having spent 50 years on the top of a candy store before being moved to his current location eight years ago. Read the full story in this blog post or this LA Times article, which includes a slideshow.

The state of Indiana seems to have a particularly fondness for Santa Claus. We first visited the town that bears his name back in 2008, but neglected to show the large statue that sits outside the town hall, surrounded by festive red benches.

Two separate can be spotted (one standing, one sitting) outside a hotel, while on the outskirts of town is a much older statue; in fact it is claimed to be the oldest Santa statue in the world.

It dates to 1935, shortly after the town’s residents realised they lived in a locale with a name that could be exploited for commercial gain. Originally thought to be 7 metres of solid granite, time and weathering have revealed that it is in fact made of concrete! Unfortunately it is too far from the road for early Street Views to give a good view.

Not quite so blurry is the 11m tall Father Christmas found an hour’s drive to the west in Haubstadt.

Roadside America reports that the surrounding derelict buildings have been demolished, leading to fears that this Santa may disappear before too long.

Many businesses adorn their premises with statues of Santa, though generally they’re not quite as disturbing as this one in Fresno, California.

Finally, just to prove that it’s not just the US that has giant Santa statues, in Lyngen, Norway, a large Julenissen² overlooks the harbour.

If you know of any other giant Santa statues please post them in the comments.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Google Sightseeing!

Locations: Alaska, California, Indiana, Norway /

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While it may look as though 8 large trailers have plummeted nose-first from the sky, they were in fact carefully placed by Frank Bates, who happens to own a nearby RV dealership. Google’s 45-degree imagery gives us a great look at the installation from the air.

This blog post has good images and information about the trailers, and the official website has a bunch of links and a documentary video. The neighbours are less than impressed with this apparent advertising ploy, but Bates is insistent that it is a true piece of art¹ inspired by his visit to Cadillac Ranch in Texas

We visited Cadillac Ranch back in the early days of this site. The satellite imagery hasn’t improved, and while there is now a Street View, it’s sadly from the very early low-resolution systems.

We visited Carhenge – another well-known car sculpture – in our Monumental Wannabes post last year. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars to spare apparently it’s now for sale.

We switch modes of transport briefly for a visit to a monument in Santa Rosa, California, that at first glance appears to be a fuzzy obelisk.

Closer observation reveals that it’s actually constructed of bicycle frames – three hundred and forty of them (and one tricycle) according this Wired article. Created by Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector the sculpture is named Cyclisk and stands almost 20m tall.

Google’s newly-released Street View imagery of Belgium allows us to see another bicycle sculpture in the town of Brakel, which is on the route of the Tour of Flanders spring classic race.

Returning to car art, we move to Sydney, Australia, where a large rock appears to have played a key role in a terrible accident involving a red Ford Festiva.

This is actually a sculpture named Still Life With Stone and Car, by artist Jimmie Durham, and it was created through the relatively simple process of, um… dropping a large rock on a car.

Originally placed near the Opera House, the sculpture was later moved to its current location where a pair of signs help dissuade any unknowing passers-by from calling the police to report the accident.

Sadly, this kind of cruel vehicular torture isn’t isolated – in 2009 we visited two places where cars have been impaled in the name of art.

In Toronto this car appears to have been abandoned for so long that it has been reclaimed by nature.

Commonly known as The Garden Car, it is more officially called the Community Vehicular Reclamation Project. More details can be found in this blog post.

Perhaps the most bizarre vehicular artwork can be found in rural Vermont, in the form of a large concrete gorilla holding aloft a Volkswagen Beetle.

The story behind its creation can be found at Roadside America.

To wrap up, a few artworks about which I haven’t been able to find much information. First, another Airstream trailer which has been converted into a spaceship in a park in Sacramento, California.

In Albuquerque an old Chevrolet has been tiled for some reason, and mounted on top of an arch.

And finally, in Geldrop, the Netherlands, a tiny old Fiat 500 has been bronzed and topped with a statue of a girl – the work of artist Carla Rump.

If you know of any other vehicular art, please post it in the comments. I’d particularly be interested to know if anyone from Stockholm knows if this bus-made-of-cars is visible on satellite or Street View. I really wanted to include it in this post but couldn’t find a precise location for it.

Locations: Australia, Belgium, California, Florida, Netherlands, New Mexico, Ontario, Texas, Vermont / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views, Structures, Weirdness

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Unlike the rest of the world, most auto racing in the United States takes place not on road circuits, but on oval speedways contained inside a seated stadium. Almost everyone has heard of legendary oval circuits such as Indianapolis and Daytona, but across the country literally thousands of local speedways dot the landscape.

Take Longhorn Speedway on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Opened in 1960 as Austin Speed-O-Rama, the quarter-mile track has been dilapidating for over a decade; though not quite long enough to obscure the Budweiser advert on the start-finish line. A few years ago rumours suggested the overgrown facility was purchased by Sandra Bullock and her motorhead ex-husband, but if true, nothing ever came of it.

Lakeside Speedway in Denver, Colorado hosted hundreds of thousands of race fans from 1938 until 1988 – when economic factors and an unfortunate spectator death combined to cause the facility to be shut down. Today, the cracked pavement and ruined grandstands remain, along with a number of cars left on the track.

Middle Georgia Raceway was open for just five years (1966-1971) before it met its demise. Not only was the track home to four top-level NASCAR races during its short life, but it also played host to the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival where legends such as Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, and Jethro Tull played to an estimated 500,000 people, which to this day ranks as one of the largest concerts in rock history.

While stock car racing has long been popular in the south, the ‘national pastime’ of the United States is usually considered to be baseball¹. One of the most difficult ballparks to play in was Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, home to the Pirates from 1909 to 1970. In the old confines, hitting a home run was a very hard thing to accomplish. Today it’d be pretty easy, as only the outside wall (including the distance markers) remains; most of the structure having been damaged in a 1971 fire. The ball diamond that exists today actually lies beyond the old Forbes outfield, which was on the other side of the wall.

Tiger Stadium was the legendary home of the Detroit Tigers from 1912 to 1999. Despite public outcry and nearly a decade of petition from the general public to preserve the old ballpark, the stadium was finally demolished in 2009, leaving just the field of play and the iconic flagpole behind centre field. Street View shows the pile of rubble left behind by the wrecking crews.

In St. Louis, there have been three separate venues named Busch Stadium. The second Busch closed in 2005, with the third Busch built next door in the old car park. The superstructure of Busch II was removed, and the field was redeveloped as a softball field as in Forbes Field; the rest serves as – you guessed it – the new Busch car park.

Not to be confused with St. Louis’ Busch Stadium is Indianapolis’ Bush Stadium. Built in 1931 for baseball, Bush was converted into a dirt track speedway in 1997 before being abandoned completely in 1999. Like the other Busch, we see that Bush is now also apparently a parking lot, though in a much more depressing sense. Bing Maps’ bird’s-eye view has an even less-flattering view of the derelict structure.

We end our abandoned stadium tour with a stadium that never even made it to completion. In 1986, the city of Sacramento wanted a baseball stadium to complement the ARCO Arena (now Power Balance Pavilion), the home of the NBA’s Kings. While the playing field was dug out, only the foundation of the stadium was ever built.

Today, the unfinished ballpark, rimmed by trees, forms an oasis in the middle of the Pavilion car park. Literally – when it rains, it fills with water!

Read part one of our abandoned stadium tour: Abandoned Stadiums of Europe, South America, and Africa.

Locations: California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas / Categories: Abandoned, Stadiums and Sport

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Simon says he was having a virtual wander around the Google campus (after viewing our link to a huge collection of Street View camera cars), when he became strangely disoriented. Start here:

From here, click the forward arrow (the one at 11 o’clock), and you end up falling out of a wormhole and onto an 8-lane motorway:

Either the jump has messed with your sense of balance or Google is also testing portable gravity wells, because when you try and look around, you can’t stand up properly¹.

Try move anywhere on this road and you end up back in Mountain View.

A little bit further down the road Simon also discovered another wormhole. Start on Stierlin Ct, just outside Microsemi:

Now attempt to wander into their car park. Boom, suddenly you’re on a 3-lane road:

But wait, it gets even weirder! Attempt to cross the road, and a wooden walkway appears as if by magic:

If you then click the left arrow to move off down this new road, you’ll be suddenly transported onto an overpass over a completely different stretch of 8-lane motorway:

So when are we likely to see the unveiling of this new futuristic technology, and what might it be used for?

Many thanks to Simon Proffitt for uncovering this exciting news!

Locations: California / Categories: Street Views, Weirdness

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Our tour begins not on a remote mountainside but in North Beach, an urban neighbourhood at the heart of San Francisco. Not only is San Francisco built on top of 50 different hills, it also lies in one of the world’s most seismically-active areas, meaning slumps and collapses are always an issue. Google’s 45° imagery captured the aftermath of a 2007 slide that came crashing down on several apartment buildings (and a strip club!).

Further down the California coast is the small village of La Conchita, where in 1995 a large mudslide slumped directly behind the town. In 2005, the southeastern portion of the slump collapsed, sending 200,000 m3 (7 million cu ft) of mud and soil into La Conchita, destroying 13 houses and killing 10 people.

In the Los Angeles neighbourhood of San Pedro, Paseo del Mar is a street that has been slowly eaten away from below by cliffs collapsing into the sea. A closer look reveals not only the pieces of the old roadway lying in the rubble, but also the foundations of buildings removed for safety purposes.

Halfway around the world in Crimea, we see where human activity has caused a landslide, as the side of a limestone quarry is falling into the Black Sea.

In 1903, much of the Albertan coal mining village of Frank was buried when the entire east face of Turtle Mountain suddenly collapsed, sending 90 million tonnes of rock into the Crowsnest River valley and killing 90 people. Over a century later, the scar is still as plain as day, and the Frank Slide is a major tourist attraction. The current highway through the valley was built right through the middle of the slide’s debris field.

The 1987 Val Pola landslide in the Italian Alps obliterated five villages and six hamlets. Heavy rainfall accelerated erosion on the mountainside, causing a large fracture on the east side of the mountain. Most of the valley’s residents were evacuated a day before the slip occurred, but what was not expected was the resulting rock avalanche ploughing into a nearby lake and sending a massive wave of water 2 km up the valley, killing 22 people.

Often, landslides and landslips falling into river valleys end up damming the rivers and creating new lakes. Two recent examples are Bolivia’s Laguna Verde, where the slope was destabilised by excessive coca farming, and Dominica’s Miracle Lake, created in 1997.

All of these slides serve to remind us that in the battle of man and nature, nature usually wins.

Locations: Alberta, Bolivia, California, Italy, Ukraine / Categories: Natural Landmarks

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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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