A star fort or trace italienne is a type of military fortification first introduced in Italy around the mid-fifteenth century. Traditional medieval castles, towers and ring forts had proved extremely vulnerable to increasingly mobile cannons, and star forts were introduced specifically to better defend against them.

The tiny Italian town of Palmanova was founded in 1593, and using all the military innovations of the 16th century was built in the shape of nine-pointed star. You can still see quite clearly how the shape of the ramparts allows the points of the star to defend each other. Originally a moat surrounded the town (which partially remains today), and three heavily guarded gates (1, 2, 3) were the only way in.

Palmanova, Italy (Wikipedia)

Cannons were most effective when they were fired perpendicular to the walls of the building under attack, and the star shaped design meant that to best position their weapons, attacking forces would have enter the space between the points of the star - where they would be fired on from both sides!

The judicious use of moats could further thwart the attacking forces, as demonstrated superbly here at Naarden, Netherlands.

Naarden, Netherlands (Wikipedia)

By the late seventeenth-century star forts reached the pinnacle of their development, as shown by this complicated example in Bourtange, Netherlands, which has been fully restored to how it would have been in 1742. Here we can see that the design provides defence in depth, with tiers of ramparts that an attacker would have had to overcome to be in with a chance of taking the fort.

Bourtange, Netherlands (Wikipedia)

This ingenious design quickly became the gold standard for defensive forts, and went on to spread across Europe and the Americas:

Fort Manoel, Malta (Wikipedia)

Fort McHenry, Maryland (Wikipedia)

Fort Jay (Wikipedia) and Fort Ticonderoga (Wikipedia), New York

Castillo de San Marcos, Florida (Wikipedia)

The design even reached South Africa, where today the Castle of Good Hope can be seen right in the middle of the city! It used to be on the coast, but land reclamation allowed the city to expand around it.

Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa (Wikipedia)

In the nineteenth century the development of the exploding shell changed the nature of defensive fortifications forever, and the star fort soon became utterly obsolete. Which is why several are today used for completely different purposes - like this example in Slovakia where they now spend their time trying to keep people inside rather than out.

Leopoldov Prison, Slovakia (Wikipedia)

And finally, what is probably the world’s most famous star fort isn’t actually known for being a star fort at all - as Fort Wood is today the distinctive star-shaped pedestal underneath New York’s Statue of Liberty.

Fort Wood, New York (Wikipedia)

We’ve previously featured just one star fort several star forts, including Kastellet in Copenhagen, Citadel Hill in Canada, and the aforementioned Fort McHenry in Maryland. If that’s not enough, there’s a whole page about them at Wikipedia too.

Thanks to Dan W, Manuel Hewitt, RB, tom schuring, Stefano Bertolo and Federico Cretti.

I wonder what kind of animal left these tracks on these salt flats in South Africa? Are there any animal trackers out there who can identify the creatures responsible?

Part of the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, this particular image also features some slightly more identifiable tracks, but not left by an animal I suspect…

See our top-rated post of all time - Google Sightseeing Safari - for lots of animals that were still there when the photographs were taken!

Thanks to lepadekor.

This small rocky outcrop off the coast of South Africa is Seal Island, which is named for the thousands of Cape Fur Seals that occupy it, and famous for the unique marine drama that unfolds here.

At various times of the year the island’s waters are home to a number of Great White Sharks that very much enjoy dining on the island’s seal population. In fact, the sharks regularly launch themselves vertically out of the water to attack the seals - a behaviour that may be unique to this one place. This is such a common occurrence that you can simply pay $210 US dollars to go and watch the sharks have the seals for breakfast. In mid-air.

This breathtaking behaviour featured in the BBC’s stunning Planet Earth tv series, as well as the Discovery Channel’s Air Jaws programmes. If you haven’t seen one of these shows, make sure you watch this truly incredible clip of the sharks in action on YouTube.

Thanks to Michael.

There have been many creatures found on Google Earth, but the most impressive ones are mostly there as part of the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, which brought us thousands of super-high-resolution aerial photographs of Africa. So to highlight the best, today we’re going on Google Sightseeing Safari!

Let’s start with the basics: many of the animals we can see in Africa are of course working animals, like this large flock of sheep, these forlorn looking donkeys, and an absolute plethora of cows, goats, camels, and people filling up at a well.

We can do much better than this though - out in the wild, things start to get a lot more exciting.

Firstly we can see a small group of Gazelles caught mid-leap in the desert of Chad, and there’s obviously been a few passing this way - look how many hoof-prints they’ve left in the sand! Also caught leaping (but through a river), are a large group of Red Lechewe in Zambia.

Again in Chad, but out on the savannah this time, we find this wonderful image of a small family of Elephants huddling together to protect their young. Presumably from the terrifying machine flying overhead…

Out on the plain in Mozambique we can see a portion of what must have been a fairly enormous herd of Buffalo, again presumably fleeing from the plane above them.

Thanks to the exceptional resolution of these images, the animals don’t have to be as big as the 1.7 metre high African Buffalo to be spotted. In a swamp in Mali, there’s a great image of a Giant Stork flapping lazily around. Just to the south there’s actually one perched in a mangrove, and lots of other birds have been caught on the wing elsewhere in Mali.

Not all the birds found are own their own though - on the coast of Mozambique there’s a stunning image of a huge flock of Pink Flamingos taking off (perhaps they were startled by this small boat to the north?).

To Zambia now, where we can see some lovely chubby little baby hippos and even better, in Tanzania we can see a pod of hundreds of hippos wallowing in the mud, which is a truly incredible sight.

Here’s another shot of the same hippos in the mud¹, but this time we can more clearly see that’s there’s actually a dead hippo lying on the bank, being feasted on by vultures.

Hippos tend to share their pools and rivers with other creatures - particularly crocodiles, and nearby to yet another pod of hippos we can see the unmistakable silhouette of a crocodile just under the water. Next to the first hippos we found, there’s another crocodile, just chilling out on the bank.

Finally, although not being the kind of animals you’d traditionally expect to see while on safari, these images of seals on the coast of Namibia are too good not to include!

And here ends the great Google Sightseeing Safari. Of course this is only the beginning as there are more than 500 Megaflyover images to explore in Google Earth! Reggie98 at the Keyhole foums has been categorizing all of the animals to be found in them.

To see all the Megaflyover images, open “Gallery” in the Layers sub-panel (bottom-left) and enable the National Geographic Layer. You’ll see little red aircraft symbols appearing all over Africa, and each of these will take you to a hi-res shot of the area. Also, here’s a link to download a kml file which details many of the hundreds of undocumented images that form part of this enormous and stunning collection.

Thanks to all of the people at the Keyhole forums who helped me find these fascinating images! For more background on the project, visit the official Megaflyover and National Geographic pages.

At first glance this might appear to be a a blurry cloud above the ocean but it is in fact hundreds of seabirds feeding on fish!

News of the feast has spread fast, and you can see more birds approaching from all directions.

If you zoom out it looks like there’s the trail of a ship which has just moved off the image to the South-west, so it’s likely that this frenzy has been caused by fishermen discarding leftover fish. According to Wikipedia this is how some seabird populations get 70% of their total food intake!

Thanks: benomir

A good couple of hundred metres inland of the South African coast, a ship appears to have crashed right into the middle of Durban Seaworld. Sadly, like the previously posted Whampoa in Hong Kong, this is just a fake ship built to house various bars and restaurants.

As a consolation, I’m pretty sure this is a real helicopter just to the East, flying over a real container ship.

Thanks: woowoowoo & Nijk

Yep, it’s time for another Monday Megapost and this week we’re focusing on those gentle giants of the sea: Oil Platforms.

The problem with finding oil platforms on Google Maps is that most of the open sea isn’t available on the higher zoom levels. Probably because there isn’t really much out there to see, and it saves Google storing multiple images of lots of boring water. Thankfully near the coast or in the smaller in-land seas and channels some oil platforms have been captured.

Our first platform is in the Gulf Of Mexico about a hundred klicks east of New Orleans. A bit closer to the coast is another and just north is what looks to be a tug pushing a line of barges.

Another one in the Gulf of Mexico, but this one is off the coast of Texas and has a very obvious helipad.

Around the other side of the US off the west coast, south of Santa Barbara is another oil field full of activity. There are two platforms that look to be in the process of being supplied by ships. There are actually four platforms all in a line here, you can see the other two off to the east.

South down the coast and out to sea from Los Angeles harbour are these two big beasties with a walkway linking them.

Way over in the Gulf of Suez which divides Africa and Asia is the Gemsa oil field which is absolutely chock full of platforms. These ones seem to be a lot bigger than the ones in the US, this one is made up of multiple platforms and landing pads, all linked together by walkways. If you zoom out a few clicks there are about five other platforms just as big.

In a bay on the west coast of South Africa is a particularly chunky looking platform that just sneaks into the high resolution coverage.

In our ongoing quest for the largest, tallest, biggest stuff in the world I couldn’t have mentioned oil platforms without including the mighty 43,000 ton Petronis Platform, the tallest free-standing structure in the world (when including underwater structures). Unfortunately I couldn’t find it on Google Maps and I suspect it falls outside the high resolution coverages areas. If anyone can track it down though, leave a comment.

Here’s a sad image of a dead or dying whale on a beach in South Africa. It seems that people are having to try to save beached whales increasingly often, and sadly there’s some suggestion that our marine sonar systems could be at fault.

More information on beached whales at Wikipedia.

Thanks to adam lewis.