Well we’ve already featured an astronomically correct copy and a reconstruction in the medium of fridges. But we can now see the actual Bronze Age megalithic monument, Stonehenge.

Stonehenge has an incredible 5,000-year history that I won’t even attempt to summarise here, as the theories surrounding it are as varied and complex as its history is long. However, the most commonly discussed aspect of this legendary monument is probably how it was built, and Wikipedia has some interesting figures which put the whole thing into perspective:

Estimates of the manpower needed to build Stonehenge put the total effort involved at millions of hours of work. The first stage probably needed around 11,000 man-hours (or 460 man-days) of work, Stage 2 around 360,000 (15,000 man-days or 41 years) and the various parts of the third stage may have involved up to 1.75 million hours (73 000 days or 200 years) of work. The working of the stones is estimated to have required around 20 million hours (830 000 days or 2300 years) of work using the primitive tools available at the time.

If you’re interested, then I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page on Stonehenge, and if you already know all of that, then check out the page of Stonehenge replicas instead!

Thanks to Tim, Jim Geurts, Dave Edmunds and Kelly.

Today is the Queen’s 80th Birthday (her actual birthday, as opposed to her official birthday), which is being celebrated at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England. It is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation – there’s been a functioning castle here since around 1070.

Besides a giant Royal Standard flag being raised over Windsor Castle (presumably from the Round Tower?), today’s events include a 41-gun royal salute in Hyde Park, and an extended royal walkabout! Er, great. You can see lots of people hanging around in the castle, maybe hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen themselves I don’t doubt.

There’s a full history of the castle at Wikipedia, and also a page explaining why the Queen gets two birthdays…

As an aside, Jonathan Rawle says:

I noticed the new hi-res areas seem to be appearing on a county-by-county basis. You can clearly see the outline of West and South Yorkshire and Greater Manshester; Cambridgeshire; Berkshire; and south Wales minus Monmouthshire. So if you’re looking for something in those areas, you’re guaranteed a good shot!

Thanks to Tom, Tim and Jonathan Rawle.

The Cardington Airship Hangers were originally built to house the R101 airship which was intended to be used to ferry cargo and passengers from the UK to India in the 1930s. These airships, as you can tell from the size of the hangers were huge, over 700ft long. Unfortunately on its maiden voyage the airship crashed into a hillside near Beauvais, north of Paris. The crash ignited the hydrogen gas bag and fire quickly engulfed the entire airship. This spelled the end of the British attempt to create lighter-than-air aircraft and the R101’s competitor, the R100, was scrapped despite a safe trans-atlantic trial flight.

The South hanger is now owned by Airship Technologies, who are trying to revive the airship business. The North hanger is used as a super big sound stage for films. Most of the outdoor Gotham Cty scenes for Batman Begins were filmed inside the hanger, aswell as several recent James Bond films.

Thanks: Loz

Richard found his Grandad!

I just managed to get Google Earth installed on my PC, and was trying to explain to my Grandad how it works. So I found his house – and lo and behold he was standing in his garden when the satellite went over. He’s the only man I know that gardens in a white shirt. This may only be interesting to the two of us, I know. But it made explaining it a lot easier – even if he does look up every time he leaves his house now…

Many thanks to Rich, and his Grandad too

These are the Sails of the South, found beside the M275 near Portsmouth, England. Unveiled in March 2001 as part of the Gateway Project regeneration scheme, it represents a masted tri-sail in homage to Portsmouth’s maritime heritage.

Er, a bit like the Spinnaker Tower in, um… Portsmouth then?

Just to the south you can see the Tipner Bridge which received refurbishment as part of the same project – there’s several masts on it which light up at night, just like the sails do. And there’s a submarine here too!

Thanks to Dee.