Where would you expect to find the world’s largest illuminated advertisement? With my years of experience in completely-useless “World’s largest” facts, I would definitely assume it would be in America, perhaps in Times Square or maybe Las Vegas.

But I would, of course, be wrong. The largest illuminated advertisement in the world is found in the German city of Leverkusen, and is known as the Bayer Cross.

The 51 m diameter logo advertises the German chemical company Bayer AG, which has also given the world aspirin, heroin and methadone. Hanging between two 118 m steel towers, the 300 tonne advert has held its world record since 1958. Unfortunately, the giant logo fails to cast an appreciable shadow.

Nevermind, the logo is again represented at the company headquarters, this time flat on the ground.

Read more about Bayer at Wikipedia and see the giant advert at Flickr.

Thanks to volker lauterbach.

Update: Apologies pylon fans, as Jonathan points out in the comments, we’ve mistakenly identified the wrong huge white and orange power pylons. The pylons in this post are in fact the Elbe Crossings 1 and 2, and the actual World’s Tallest Electricity Pylons for Single Phase AC Powerline are here instead.

This is, wait for it… the World’s Tallest Electricity Pylon for Single Phase AC Powerline – which forms part of the Bremen-Industriehafen Weser Powerline Crossing, Bremen, Germany.

There are actually four of these 111 m tall pylons, carrying two parallel sets of single phase AC powerline across the Elbe, and all four look to be painted a lovely stripe of white and International Orange (a colour often used to help people avoid flying planes into tall things).

Especially for dr.R. and cookie monster.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

This is what used to be the island of Jordsand in the Wadden Sea, just off the coast of Denmark, and east of the German island of Sylt.

Once upon a time it may have connected to both the mainland and Sylt, but by 1873 it was down to just 18.4 hectares in size. Attempts to protect the island were made during the 1970s but recurring floods continued to reduce its area and, during the winter of 1998, the little island was finally submerged for good.

Interestingly, the low resolution image used on Google Maps for the more zoomed-out views still shows some small sections of land protruding from the water.

Thanks to Lars Dybdahl.

The Vitruvian Man (Wikipedia) was drawn around 1487 by Leonardo Da Vinci, and has since become not only the most famous of Da Vinci’s works, but also one of the most famous images ever created. The drawing depicts a male nude in two superimposed positions within a square and a circle – the archetypal ‘perfect man’. Da Vinci was a talented anatomical artist, and was apparently rather partial to regularly cutting up corpses to help hone his skills.

In fact the Vitruvian Man is more than just a pretty picture – it’s also an extremely clever mathematical triumph, as it correctly relates the man’s proportions to historic measurements, such as the foot (six of which add up to his height), the cubit, hand and fathom. The complexity of the design will forever ensure that no overly-ambitious artist attempts to re-create it on Google Earth using the medium of “crop maze”.

Oh. Damn.

To give them their due credit, the people responsible for this German crop maze have done a pretty amazeing job – although, putting my ruler and pedantry skills into action showed that the “square” is more like 80 x 83m… and the circle is a bit wobbly compared to the original… but the positioning of the navel exactly in the centre is impressive!

This is actually the 2001 version of the town’s annual hemp labyrinth tradition, which in the past has seen a particularly spectacular map of Europe, a portrait of Albert Einstein and a tribute to the 2004 Athens Olympics. You can see aerial photos of them all at the maze’s website.

Thanks to godlike.

Today is Earth Day, a global observance started by US Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970 as a nationwide protest intended to thrust the environment onto the political agenda. Considered the birth of the modern environmental movement, the continuing mission of Earth day is to raise awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment.

Hundreds of millions of people in around 175 countries will be taking part in events which have been organised at every corner of the globe, and you lot don’t get out of doing your part either! Show your support for Earth day and leave a comment with a link to a globe of the earth, somewhere on Google Earth – like this great big one in Berlin.

Check out the The Earth Day Network website for more information, and thanks to Tom Hooten for our starter globe.