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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Did they know Google were on their way?

This message on a Dublin beach, “CYNTHIA, WILL YOU MARRY ME?”, nearly passes our stringent rules for acceptance of aeroplane-visible marriage proposals, but did Cynthia accept?

Thanks to LancelotLink

We’re pretty sure this crop-maze in France depicts a couple of bananas riding bicycles, but we haven’t a clue why.

Thanks to Rod

In Argentina we find another strange design decision, where somebody has arranged a whole bunch of trees into a giant guitar. For some reason this seems more sensible than the cycling bananas, but only just.

Thanks to Mick

OK, a giant guitar we kind of get, but who on Earth would want a swimming pool shaped like a foot? Somebody in Japan apparently.

Thanks to Jamie

Crazy roads

This ridiculously bendy road in the mountains of Chile must surely be a contender for the most bends covering the shortest distance award. As the crow flies, obviously.

Thanks to Shaun

Meanwhile, we suspect these “speed bumps” would cause a little more slowdown than required on Interstate 91, Massachusetts. If you drove really fast at them however…

Thanks to Meredith

You’d never see this any other way

This chilling scene capture the remains of a wrecked boat on the shores of a remote Antarctic island.

Thanks to Brian

In the news

Last week Apple announced iCloud, a new “cloud”-based music and data service for all you squillions of iPad and iPhone users – and here’s the brand spanking new facility in North Carolina where all your data will be stored (once you’ve unquestioningly uploaded it all of course).

Elsewhere, the actions of some unruly New Zealand students made headlines around the world when they did what students have done since students were invented – they drew pictures of penises. Except these students did it on a much larger scale than your average students. Compensating for something boys?

Have you found something weird, amazing, beautiful or completely inexplicable on Google Maps or Google Earth? Send us your suggestions and we’ll publish the best ones next week!

Locations: Antarctica, Argentina, Chile, France, Ireland, Japan, Massachusetts, New Zealand, North Carolina / Categories: Abandoned, Large Type, Other Vehicles, Watercraft, Weirdness

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The show itself has two different versions (and locations) depending on where in the world you’re watching. The original American version is filmed on a ranch outside of Los Angeles, California in a community called Canyon Country.

The British version of the show, known as “Total Wipeout”, is filmed on a set located in Argentina. Regardless of where you look, both sets are remarkably similar when viewed from above and interestingly, they’re both within 5 km of each other in latitude, but in opposite directions from the equator!

Since the resolution of the American set is higher (and your slightly biased author is from the states), lets take a look at the set in California. Numerous blue, empty pools can be seen forming a circular pattern that follows the same flow as the show. The set in Argentina is composed to two nearly identical sections running in opposite directions.

The first set of pools is where the contestants compete in the “Wipeout Qualifier” round. The blue pools are all obviously filled with water when the show is taping, but the brown ones to the left and middle are filled with thick mud!

The next empty pool contains a set of planks that rotate in opposite directions during the second round of the show. Contestants must get from the platform on the northern side to the opposite side without getting knocked into the water by the rotating beams. They rarely make it over successfully!

By comparison, the rotating planks on the “Total Wipeout” set look much less ferocious than their American cousins.

Round three of the show usually takes place on the south side of the set in either the spinning platform to the left, or the baseball influenced obstacle course on the right. Watch out for those spinning baseball bats!

The show ends with the “Wipeout Zone”, and the obstacles look very similar in both versions. The large “launching” platform is clearly visible on both sets in the southeastern corner. The pool base is not blue like the other ones because this scene is filmed a nigh.

Other sites on the set include what appear to be cast and contestant trailers, and to the northern side you can see the prop and maintenance buildings.

Regardless of which version you watch, Wipeout (or Total Wipeout) is a hilarious show and I highly recommend giving it a try.

Thanks to Tim and Neill for the links!

Locations: Argentina, California / Categories: Movie Locations, Stadiums and Sport

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The Atacama desert in South America is the driest desert in the world, and scientists often compare it to the arid surface of Mars. This place is so dry that weather stations collect an average rainfall is just 1 millimetre (0.04 in) per year in some regions, while mountains in other areas show no signs of even having prehistoric glaciers… ever. NASA uses this desert landscape to test out life-detecting instruments on future Mars missions.

The Atacama covers 105,000 km2 (40,600 square miles) of Northern Chile between the Chilean Coast Range and the Andes Mountains. The desert’s dry atmosphere is a result of mountains on both sides blocking incoming moisture and a coastal inversion layer from the cold Humboldt Current in the Pacific Ocean. You can see how the moisture just stops at the Andes using Google’s satellite mapping. This unique weather pattern results in the near complete and total absence of rain aside from some an occasional marine fog that keeps the algae, lichens and even some cacti hydrated.

Human population is scarce in this desert. Towns that do exist are often built around a natural desert oasis much like the village of San Pedro de Atacama. The town was founded around 1450 and today only holds a population of near 5,000. Visitors to San Pedro often report mild altitude sickness such as dizziness, lethargy and headaches due to the town’s high altitude of 2,400 m (7,874 ft) and dry atmosphere.

The Atacama’s nearly non-existent cloud cover, dry atmosphere, high elevation, and low population (meaning no pollution and radio interference) makes it an ideal location for astronomical studies. There are two major observatories in the desert including the La Silla Observatory, and the Paranal Observatory (which has great Google imagery resolution as well).

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Atacama was used on a large scale for mining sodium nitrate. When synthetic nitrate was invented in the early 1900s, many of these towns subsequently became abandoned – leaving as many as 170 deserted locations that can be seen across the desert today. Some of the most popular locations include Humberstone and Chacabuco. The desert does a great job of preserving these places by preventing natural erosion and decay.

The Atacama’s Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) gives you a chance to experience what it’s like to actually walk on the moon! Like its name suggests, this region west of San Pedro that looks an awful lot like the surface of the moon due to salt deposits that give the ground a white colour and lunar texture. Scientists believe that some of these grounds have not seen a drop of rain in over a hundred years!

The only thing missing from the lunar surface at Valle de la Luna are impact craters, but not to worry because south of this region you can find the Monturaqui meteorite crater. This 460 m (1,509 ft) diameter crater makes the experience of being in another world complete!

To read more about the Atacama, visit Wikipedia.

Locations: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Deserts

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One of Calatrava’s earliest bridge commissions helped cement his international reputation for civic engineering, the Bac de Roda bridge in Barcelona. Like the vast majority of his work, the structure is entirely white.

Part of the city’s pre-Olympic development, the bridge incorporates steel cables, a method used in many of Calatrava’s subsequent designs, including the Puente del Alamillo in Seville, which features a 142m tall mast.

Similar in design to the previously featured Sundial Bridge, the Puente del Alamillo was part of Seville’s preparations for Expo ’92.

In Buenos Aires the 100m long Puente de la Mujer uses the same technique, but the mast is angled forward rather than backwards. In this case, the mast also supports a section of bridge that pivots through 90 degrees to allow boat traffic to pass, coming to rest at the stabilising pylon visible in the river to the south.

While Calvatara’s bridges are generally well received and establish themselves as symbols of the communities where they are built, there have been some exceptions. In Bilbao, the Zubizuri has met with opposition on several fronts.

The Zubizuri’s deck includes glass bricks which apparently break easily and become very slippery in the rain, additionally, the placement of the bridge on the river edge (rather than the elevated city street) made it somewhat impractical to actually use, so the city had to build a connecting walkway – the curved structure to the left of the bridge. Calatrava actually felt this was detrimental to his creation, and amazingly, won €30,000 through his legal action.

Furthermore, Calatrava’s Ponte della Costituzione in Venice – shown as under construction on Google Maps, but actually completed a year ago – has also met with controversy for being too expensive, inaccessible to anyone unable to traverse its many steps, and for being too close to one of the city’s classic bridges across the Grand Canal.

Named for one of Dublin’s most famous writers¹, the James Joyce bridge has had a better reception from locals, perhaps because the design mirrors many of the other arched bridges across the Liffey. However like the Zubizuri, the James Joyce has a glass block walkway² – though it’s possible that the frosted finish to the glass makes it safer to traverse in Irish weather!

Another of Calatrava’s bridges, named for another writer – Samuel Beckett – is under construction further east. It will be a swing bridge very similar to Puente de la Mujer.

Finally, the spectacular Chords Bridge in Jerusalem is one of Calatrava’s more notable recent bridge designs, but unfortunately it’s not yet visible on Google Maps.

The second part of this examination of Calatrava’s work looks at some of his most famous and notable buildings.

Thanks to Redder Zooming.

Locations: Argentina, Ireland, Italy, Spain / Categories: Bridges, Shadows, Street Views, Structures

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The water backs up behind the wall of ice, raising the level of the southern arm of the lake until the pressure becomes so great that the dam collapses. This process repeats in an unpredictable cycle, every four or five years on average, but sometimes much more or less. (The last rupture event, in July 2008, was captured on video.) Notice how the shoreline of the southern part of the lake has a margin of bare rock, indicating the fluctuating water level – unlike the northern part, which has vegetation almost down to the water’s edge.

Perito Moreno is one of 48 glaciers that descend from the 350km-long Southern Patagonian Ice Field, which is the third largest continental ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland). Among them are the Upsala Glacier, which flows into the northern end of Lago Argentino. This glacier has shrunk markedly over the past few decades, and Greenpeace has used photos comparing its extent in 1928 and 2004 to highlight climate change.¹

While there is no high-res imagery of Perito Moreno (except for the topmost part), Google does have some stunning close-ups of the Upsala Glacier, showing jagged shadows, huge icebergs and walls of rock scoured clean by the ice, with a sharp line marking the former edge of the glacier. Your geography teacher would love it.

While you’re here, over on the Chilean side of the ice field, check out the Brüggen Glacier², the longest in the southern hemisphere – it’s impressive, even in low resolution, and parts of it have high res too!

Thanks to Cory Lueninghoener. There’s more info at (you guessed it) Wikipedia.

Locations: Argentina, Chile / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Shadows

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Fuelled by the ancient myth of the lost continent of Atlantis, underwater cities have always been the subject of much fascination.

Of course in real life small towns and villages are sometimes subsumed beneath changing bodies of water, but somewhat surprisingly, Google’s imagery has managed to capture at least three underwater towns which were all handily above water at the time.¹

St. Thomas, Nevada

Back in 1871, the small town of St. Thomas, Nevada (Wikipedia) was first abandoned by the Mormons, after a shift in the state line severely altered their tax liability.

The people who claimed the empty properties would eventually be forced to leave themselves, thanks to the construction of the Hoover Dam and the creation of Lake Mead, which even today is the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States.

The Hoover Dam was completed in 1935, and just three years later the last resident of St. Thomas was forced to leave by the rising waters of Lake Mead. Here we can still see the outline of the town’s school, which like several other properties becomes visible when the reservoir is low.

Adaminaby, Australia

Adaminaby (Wikipedia) is a town near Australia’s Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, which has the distinction of being one of the highest towns in Australia², and a very popular place from which to take fishing trips to nearby Lake Eucumbene.

On Street View we can see The Big Trout that graces the town centre in recognition of fishing’s importance here.

This is strange though, as it was the creation of Lake Eucumbene that forced all of the residents to have to abandon the original town…

In April 2007 the ongoing drought³ in this region brought the water level so low that Old Adaminaby began to re-appear, 50 years after it had been flooded as part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme hydro-electricity project.

Unfortunately the structures themselves are only faintly visible from up here, but elsewhere on the shores are other more prominent ruins that are also becoming exposed.

(Try turning on the photos option on Google Maps to see lots of great ground-level photos from the Panaramio Google Earth layer.)

Epecuén, Argentina

In contrast to these tales of towns being submerged in the name of progress, sometimes nature just takes its course. From about 1920 the water level of Argentina’s lake Epecuén rose steadily, and in 1978 the locals put earth and stone defences in place to try and protect their village.

These defences held back the water until November 10th 1985, when it finally broke through and flooded the village four metres deep. Here we can see the various buildings jutting from the surface of the lake.

Judging by the number of photographs available online, it seems that Epecuén is a popular destination for photographers, so there’s loads of ground-level photo sets to see – including this rather nice one on Flickr.

Thanks to Claude Warren and kjfitz.

Locations: Argentina, Australia, Nevada / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Weirdness

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Such a giant beast should easily be visible on the aerial and satellite photographs of Google Earth, it’s just a matter of finding them…

To start with, there’s definitely a blue whale in this Japanese swimming pool, but I don’t think that counts.

The Route 66 landmark Blue Whale slide is so famous it even appeared in Sega’s King of Route 66 video game. More info.

Outside of UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory there’s an 85-foot long Blue Whale skeleton. The female whale was washed ashore of Pescadero Beach in 1979, after dying of unknown causes.

We’ve still not found any live whales though! Off the coast of Santa Barbara there’s a 10m long grey blob that could resemble a whale, or more likely a shark. Either way it would have to be very close to the surface to be seen so easily. I’m not convinced.

‘Reverence‘ is a sculpture by Jim Sardonis, which depicts two whales seemingly diving into the grass. The tails are each 12-13 foot tall and made of granite. More info.

Back in Japan, and Ueno Park has more than tails – there’s a life size Blue Whale diving into the ground. More info.

And finally, to Argentina, where there could just be real whales.

According to whale expert wildslide these are southern right whales who breed in this area during the months of May and October. Success!

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Whales! and Beached Whale

Thanks: The many people who thought they saw a whale, including: Jonathan_Tronson, FrequentFlyer, danescombe, bagabnoosh, kjfitz, Ralph Mettier, Nick, Jim Morton, Andrew, Rking, Yoshino, Barb, Caraurta, danescombe, Todd Pearson, Andrea from Italy, Nichole, James, A30 & John Hartnup

Locations: Argentina, California, Japan, Oklahoma, Vermont, Wales / Categories: Animals, Watercraft

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Iguazu Falls are wider in area than the Niagara or Victoria falls and despite being reportedly more spectacular than both have failed to achieve as much fame. When the First Lady Mrs. Roosevelt saw Iguazu Falls she exclaimed “Poor Niagara”, yet to be honest I hadn’t heard about Iguazu until about 10 minutes ago. Still, I’ve learned my lesson now and read the Wikipedia page.

Thanks: PZ, Doug Olson, Vinicius Lage, Zara, Román Gorojovsky, Michael Walter & Spamboy

Locations: Argentina, Brazil / Categories: Natural Landmarks

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Right in the middle of the street stands a 67 metre obelisk marking the heart of Buenos Aires. You can climb to the top too where you’ll find four observation windows – great view I reckon, check out this impressive photo of the Avenue and Obelisk.

Thanks: Eduardo Tabacman, Devin Crowe, Fernando, Juan Francisco De Paula, Osvaldo Miatello, cacafuego, Sergio T, Florencia and Jerry Mills.

Locations: Argentina / Categories: Monuments, Other Vehicles, Shadows, Towers

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