Of course many of these are easy to see without any special equipment, so for many years scientists on Earth wondered if we can see them all so easy up there, why can’t we see them down here on our planet? Then along came aerial photography…

GSS visited some of the most recognizable impact craters on Earth already, including Barringer Meteor Crater in the United States and Manicouagan Impact Crater in Canada, but updated and enhanced imagery makes these sites worth a second visit.

We start our tour with the largest verified impact crater on Earth, Vredefort Crater in South Africa. Measuring a staggering 250 – 300 km (155 – 186 miles) across, this crater was formed over 2 billion years ago by an asteroid estimated 10 km (6 miles) in size.

Today, the most recognizable feature of the crater is the northwest rim that created the mountains near the town of Parys. Vredefort was also added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2005.

Our next stop is a crater in southern Ontario, Canada near the city of Sudbury. The Sudbury Basin was formed by a meteorite impact 1.85 billion years ago, creating a round 250-km (155 miles) crater.

Subsequent geological processes like tectonic plate movement then stretched into its current oval shape, which is hard to see on the satellite image. However, the crater shape is strikingly obvious when using Google’s terrain mapping. It is the second largest verified impact site on the planet.

Perhaps the most famous meteorite impact of them all is the one that slammed the Earth in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, and also is the one that scientists believed killed 75% of the species on Earth including the dinosaurs¹.

About 65 million years ago, a 10 km (6 mi) wide meteorite slammed into the Earth and created a 180 km (110 mi) wide crater centered just off the coast of present day Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, the south to southeast rim can still seen with Google’s satellite maps if you know where to look. The Chicxulub crater is the third largest verified impact crater on the planet.

Be sure to check out the other GSS articles on impact craters and other natural landmarks, including the Kebira Crater. Check Wikipedia for more information about the Vredefort Crater, Sudbury Basin, or the Chicxulub Crater. Since there are so many sites around the Earth, we’ll be sure to have more crater articles soon!

Locations: Arizona, Mexico, Ontario, Quebec, South Africa / Categories: Natural Landmarks, World Heritage Sites

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The Republic of San Marino

The unique thing about visiting an enclave is that no matter where you’re coming from, you must travel through another country first, in this case Italy. San Marino is one of the smallest countries in the world, only 60 sq km (23.5 sq mi) in total area, ranking it number 221 out of 233 countries (and outlying territories) in total size.

The Kingdom of Lesotho

An enclave within the country of South Africa, Lesotho’s other most interesting geographical feature is that its lowest point is the highest of any country in the world! Lesotho also produces one of the most striking visual borders we’ve seen on Google’s satellite images, due to the change in vegetation as you pass from Lesotho’s west side to South Africa.

Vatican City

The smallest sovereign state in the world, Vatican City is an enclave not just inside Italy, but also inside the city of Rome. This is also the world’s only walled enclave, since its small border is marked almost entirely with a city wall.

Of course it’s also home to the Pope and the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church, and although not commonly known as its own country, Vatican City offers clergy, guard members and other workers optional citizenship; they generate their own income from tourist sales; and they even issue their own Euro coins.

Be sure to check out other enclave/exclave GSS articles like Point Roberts, USA, Complicated borders featuring the split personality town of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau, and Interesting Exclaves of the United States.

Also check out Wikipedia for more information about landlocked countries, San Marino, Lesotho, and Vatican City!

Locations: Italy, South Africa / Categories: Weirdness, World Heritage Sites

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The South African courts convicted Mandela on charges of sabotage committed while he led the military arm of the ANC in their struggle against apartheid.

In 1964, Mandela began his sentence on Robben Island (which we covered in detail last year), where he spent the next 18 years.

In March 1982 Mandela was transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, south of Cape Town, where he was held at the maximum security building, which is today known as the admission centre. He described Pollsmoor Prison as “the truth of Oscar Wilde’s haunting line about the tent of blue that prisoners call the sky.”¹

In 1988 Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison, a low security farm prison that was often used as stepping stone for releasing lower-risk political prisoners. It was here that the world’s media gathered to record the moment that Mandela was finally released, 27 years after he was first imprisoned.

Of course that was just the beginning. Following his release, Mandela helped lead the way towards multi-racial democracy in South Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in 1994 became the first President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.

Today there are roads, squares and statues of Nelson Mandela all over the world, all standing as testament to the positive change he helped make possible. This is Nelson Mandela Gardens in Millennium Square, Leeds, and a statue of him in Parliament Square, London.

Sandton Square in Johannesburg was renamed Nelson Mandela Square, and features a 6 metre statue of the former president. Sadly there’s no Street View, but you can actually just about see the statue in the satellite imagery, right in the centre of our thumbnail image (ground-level photo).

In November 2009 the United Nations General Assembly announced that from 2010 the 18th of July, Mandela’s birthday, would be known as ‘Mandela Day’ to mark the enormous importance of his contribution to world freedom.

Locations: England, South Africa / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

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The island has a dubious history as a place of imprisonment and exile long before the rise of apartheid. Its first prison use is thought to be as early as the 17th century when opponents of Dutch colonies around the world were sent there, while British forces sentenced African leader Makanda Nxele to life imprisonment there early in the 19th century. For almost a century, starting in 1836, lepers were sent to male and female colonies on separate parts of the island.

South Africa’s apartheid regime opened the maximum security prison in 1959, and over the subsequent 32 years over 3000 men – mostly political prisoners – suffered through brutal policies and barbaric conditions. Recently-elected South African president Jacob Zuma was one of many notable inmates.

The lime quarry was one of several work sites for prisoners sentenced to hard labour.

Nelson Mandela spent eighteen years in cell block B before being freed in 1990.

The island and prison now serve as a museum and a reminder of the resistance against a terrible regime.

Thanks to yikesahootie.

Locations: South Africa / Categories: Buildings, Islands

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The town lies at the intersection of the N1 and N12 highways (two of South Africa’s busiest roads), and it’s the N1 that splits around the buildings. The prison was established in 1873, so presumably the road was divided to avoid the building, rather than this being some sort of primitive escape-deterrent!

Of all the people who drive around this roundabout every day, I wonder how many of them even realise they’re circling a prison?

Thanks to Fraser (again), via magnumphotos.com (which has some more information on the troubled town as well as an excellent, if not entirely SFW photo gallery).

Locations: South Africa / Categories: Buildings, Other Vehicles

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According to gyrrus, who found the image of the whale:

it probably drifted onshore already dead … and was removed by the Norwegian Coast Guard a week or two after this image was taken.

This isn’t the only example of a dead whale found in Google’s imagery – all the way back in February 2006 we posted this image of a bleeding whale on a beach in South Africa.

We also previously featured a couple of pods of very-much-alive whales, as well as a roundup of some of the best fake whales across the globe.

Thanks to gyrrus.

Locations: Norway, South Africa / Categories: Animals

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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.

<br/> 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.

<br/> 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.

<br/> Bourtange, Netherlands (Wikipedia)

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

<br/> Fort Manoel, Malta (Wikipedia)

<br/> Fort McHenry, Maryland (Wikipedia)

<br/> Fort Jay (Wikipedia) and Fort Ticonderoga (Wikipedia), New York

<br/> 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.

<br/> 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.

<br/> 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.

<br/> 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.

Locations: Florida, Malta, Maryland, Netherlands, New York, South Africa / Categories: Buildings, Structures

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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.

Locations: South Africa / Categories: Animals, Other Vehicles

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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.

Locations: South Africa / Categories: Animals, Movie Locations

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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.

Locations: Africa, Chad, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia / Categories: Animals, Deserts

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