Google have just expanded Street View’s coverage to 14 countries with the addition of 11 Canadian cities and regions¹, and the Czech city of Prague.

We’ve already found some great Street View sights, which you can see on our brand-new Street View page or even better, follow us on Twitter to get the latest sights the moment we find them.

Montreal’s Olympic stadium was one of the very first sights we posted to Google Sightseeing, when the site was just 3 days old. Now 4 and half years later, we get a much better view of the bizarre building and the world’s tallest inclined structure.

Outside the stunning Canadian Parliament building we can see Tamil protestors, calling for action on the Sri Lankan Civil War. They protested non-stop throughout most of April 2009.

Probably Canada’s most recognisable landmark, the CN Tower in Toronto can be spotted from miles around. This unique view, complete with truck about to crash into the tower, comes from the CTV’s television station.

The impressive Czech National Museum sits atop Prague’s Wenceslas Square. The facade had to undergo major repairs following severe gunfire damage during the 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention.

Have you found anything cool on the new Street View? Send us a tweet so we can tell the world!

Yesterday Google finally announced the launch of some fantastic new Street View imagery, covering Portugal, Switzerland and Taiwan. This means we can now use Street View to see some great previously featured sights, such as the current title holder of “world’s tallest completed building”, Taipei 101.¹

As part of the same announcement, imagery was unveiled of some slightly less traditional locations, including Laguna Seca Raceway, and Thunderhill Raceway Park, where the Street View car actually raced round the tracks.²

The remaining locations to receive imagery yesterday were even more unusual, San Diego State University and Legoland California. Both of these are fully pedestrianised, and the imagery was captured using the widely publicised Street View Trike.

Using the trike, Google captured some excellent images of Legoland California, many of which we’ve been linking to on our Twitter page – but there’s still lots to be found.

On the other hand, the imagery captured of San Diego State University is slightly less interesting. You might think that it would help entice students to the admittedly utterly picturesque California campus, but as far as we’re concerned, this looks like the most boring University campus in the world.

Why does nobody wave at the camera? Why is it that nobody chases the bike? Why do none of the students flash any naked body parts at the lenses? Naturally, not all students conform to the rowdy stereotypes we have in the UK, but why does nobody really react to the camera at all?

You might guess that they were all instructed not to react in advance, but even the people on guided tours don’t look very interested in the passing camera trike.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that the private properties mentioned here have been brought to your screens through the Street View Partner Program, which allows property managers to request that Google record images of their properties.

What other private places would you like to be able to take virtual tours of?

Here in Canada, there’s a large scale windfarm known as Le Nordais, which as well as having 133 conventional wind turbines, also features one particular design of wind turbine with which you may be unfamiliar.

Le Nordais is split between two locations, and it is at Éole Cap-Chat on the Gaspé Peninsula that we find the Cap-Chat Wind Turbine, which at 110 metres is the tallest vertical-axis wind turbine in the world.

The “vertical axis” refers to the the main rotor shaft which runs vertically. One of the benefits of this arrangement is that the generators and gearboxes can be placed close to the ground, but more importantly, that vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWT) do not need to be pointed into the wind.

The Cap-Chat turbine is actually a Darrieus wind turbine, and the reason we don’t see many of them is that despite the apparent benefits, the constantly changing direction of the forces applied to the spinning blades causes poor performance and reliability.

For these reasons Darrieus designs are no longer developed, but the torque issues were eventually solved by using a development of the Darrieus design that features a helical twist of the blades.

Great shadow though!

Official site, Ground-level pic, VAWTs on Wikipedia. Thanks to Benoit and Eric.

The world of gargantuan statuary has changed considerably since we published the original Very Large Buddhas post just over 3 years ago. The title of world’s largest statue is now held by the Spring Temple Buddha in Henan, China.

The statue alone is 128m tall, and it stands on a 20m tall lotus throne, which in turn stands on a 25m tall pedestal – giving the structure a total height of 153m.

The statue – including the lotus throne – is 128m tall. Its original 25m tall pedestal gave the structure a total height of 153m. However, recent information shows that the hill it was built on has been constructed into an additional pedestal. The total height is now believed to be 208m. Panoramio has several pictures, and this image in particular gives you a sense of just how immense this monument is (and shows the new pedestal under construction.)

Little is known about the Spring Temple Buddha in the West, so it likely wasn’t listed on Wikipedia when Alex wrote the original post. It was constructed in 2002 in response to Taliban bombing of Buddha statues in Afghanistan, as well as to thwart Indian plans to create the world’s largest statue.  I haven’t been able to find any vital statistics about it, but this image seems to show that the toes alone are close to 2m high.

The world’s second largest statue is the Laykyun Setkyar in Myanmar, which is so new (completed in 2008) that we only see it partially constructed on Google Maps.

At 116m on a 13.5m pedestal it is barely taller in total than the Spring Temple statue alone. Panoramio has a few pictures of the completed structure, which also show that it is, interestingly, located near a reclining Buddha which, at 90m in length, would probably be the world’s 9th tallest statue if it was upright.

As it is also located in a somewhat secretive country, detailed statistics are similarly hard to find. The regime consistently claims it is the world’s largest though, despite evidence to the contrary.

The world’s third largest statue is Ushiku Daibutsu in Japan. It was featured in the original Very Large Buddhas post, though there is new imagery that shows it in greater detail.

Thanks to Lukasz for the link to the reclining Buddha, and to Alex for letting me update his original post.

The longest staircase in the world can be found on the slopes of Mount Niesen in the Swiss Alps.

The 11,674 steps run alongside the Niesenbahn funicular which travels from the side of the Kander river in Mülenen (altitude 693m) to the terminus near the 2362m summit of Mount Niesen.

During the 28 minute ride, the funicular – which opened in 1910 – travels through lush Alpine woods, passes through several tunnels and across some elevated sections.

While the staircase is only used by service personnel, it is opened to 200 people for one day a year for the Niesenlauf stair run. The Galerien pages of the race’s German site give you some idea of what an ordeal this must be – running through cloud, rain or even snow, though the race takes place in June.

The record for the event is 1h2m for men and 1h9m for women, which I find remarkably fast considering the number of steps is equivalent to climbing the CN Tower 4.5 times, or Taipei 101 almost 6 times or the Empire State Building more than 7 times, though it does look like some sections are somewhat less steep than others.

There appears to be a more conventional hiking trail for public use, with the number of switchbacks along the way giving some sense of how steep this pyramid-shaped mountain really is.

The mountain’s visitor guide has some great pictures and information, and YouTube has a fast-forward trip up the funicular and a high-speed stroll to the summit.