Continuing the never-ending stream of “World’s largest…” we present The World’s Largest Portrait, which adorns the hills of Erzincan in Turkey.

The massive 7.5 square km painting is of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkey until his death in 1938. Despite his passing some time ago, Atatürk’s face is still a very popular image and is featured on banknotes, public buildings, schools, and (in this case) mountains.

The image was painted in 1982 by the order of the then-ruling military junta and it took 3000 soldiers just under a month to finish their handiwork.

Over the years the Turkish army have continued to write on the country’s hills, more recently writing one of Ataturk’s favourite sayings: “Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene!“.

With the second largest standing armed force in NATO (after the much larger USA), perhaps the soldiers have spare time on their hands?

Previously: Portraits Paintings in Google Earth.

Thanks to ssaatci and baharbahar

(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir – which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

Legend tells us that near the city of Xi’an, China, there lies a gigantic white pyramid – far larger than any Egyptian pyramid – that has remained undiscovered for millennia. The story goes that this pyramid is encased in “pure shimmering stone” and “capped with an enormous jewel”…

Despite decades of denial by archaeologists and bureaucrats, the surprising truth of the matter is that whilst no white pyramid has so far been found here – there are pyramids in China!

Believed to be the burial places of various emperors and generals, there are loads¹ of these tombs scattered all over this plain. They range in size from relatively tiny to rivaling the Great pyramid of Giza in terms of footprint (although even the largest is only around one third the height of Giza’s largest).

Surprisingly, it took until 1994 before these monuments were widely publicised, when German author Hartwig Hausdorf published his book Die Weisse Pyramide, in which he told the story of trying to find the mysterious White Pyramid for himself.

There is a short Wikipedia page on the Chinese Pyramids, but for a really thorough examination of the myth surrounding these monuments, read the report at unexplainedearth.com which includes some ground level shots.

Thanks to Christoph Hoflack and Simon Brennan.

This is South Korea’s infamous Jeju Loveland, an outdoor sculpture park on Cheju Island, which is based entirely around the theme of sex.

The park’s website describes it as “a place where sexually-oriented art and eroticism meet”. Which means that what you can see in our thumbnail is exactly what you think it is.

There’s 140 sculptures here mostly representing couples in various sexual encounters, although only one or two of the bigger ones are visible here due to the fairly low resolution of the satellite shots. Therefore, I feel it is my duty to provide you with links to the official Jeju Loveland website, a gallery of photos from ground level, and another gallery with shots of some different sculptures.

Although it should probably go without saying, please bear in mind that all three of those links are quite probably Not Safe For Work!

Read more at Wikipedia if you dare

Thanks to Anon!

Check out this car absolutely rocketing through the desert in Afghanistan – the dust plume it’s kicking up is over a kilometre long!

This is actually Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, which as well as playing a pivotal part in the War against Terror is also likely responsible for as much as 42% of the world’s opium production.

So basically there’s any number of reasons why this car might be travelling at such a speed out here.

Thanks to H20s.