The other day I caught the end of the video for the awful London Bridge by Fergie and I noticed that Fergie and her crew were dancing around in front of London’s most famous bridge and the image of a million postcards: Tower Bridge.

It was clear that Fergie had fallen for the same trick that Londoners have been playing on Americans for years, confusing them between the grand Tower Bridge and its much more boring neighbor London Bridge.

The most famous example is that of Robert P. McCulloch, American entrepreneur and owner of McCulloch Oil, who in 1968 paid $2,460,000 to have the then-collapsing London Bridge dismantled and shipped right across the world to be rebuilt in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. He later claimed it not to be true, but everyone knows that he thought he was buying Tower Bridge. Numpty.

Although clearly not much to look at, London Bridge is the second most popular tourist destination in the state of Arizona. For more info see the previous GgSs coverage of Tower Bridge and Wikipedia for London Bridge.

Thanks: Ben & Shea MarshaLL

This is the Lavender Pit, part of the Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee, Arizona. The Phelps Dodge Corporation began work on this huge hole in 1951, but they had to move 46 million tons of material before they reached the copper.

However, by 1975 over one billion tons of copper had been successfully extracted, at which point the price of copper plummeted, and the whole mine was closed.

Given that the demand for copper is currently rising again (and therefore the price), I wonder which bright spark will try to reopen one of these ecological disasters first?

Read more about the Lavender Pit at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Jeff and John B.

This is the Tonto Natural Bridge near Payson, AZ – which is less like a natural bridge and more like a natural tunnel.

The creekbed disappears into the 50 metre-high tunnel for around 120 metres – the two entrances you can see in our thumbnails, and the inside of which you can see in numerous online galleries. (I’ve chosen this gallery to link to, because I like the way they’ve gone over the top with arty-farty photoshop filters )

Thanks to Jason Creach.

I was reading some old comments on the site and rediscovered this fabulous swirling water on Lake Powell. However this beautiful sight isn’t quite as innocent as it first seems.

On closer inspection you can identify the boat that’s causing this swirl, and taking a wander around the area turns up another one, followed by a whole flotilla. This initially deserted-looking landscape is in fact overrun with people – none of whom would be here if several environmental organisations had their way.

Lake Powell is actually a man-made reservoir, which was created by the flooding of Glen Canyon with the Colorado River – an engineering feat accomplished and maintained by the controversial Glen Canyon Dam. Despite the obvious possibilities for damage to the area’s ecosystem, Lake Powell is arguably one of the most beautiful lakes in the whole of America, and each year over 2 million people get to see sights like the Rainbow Bridge, which would otherwise be too remote for most of them to reach.

But reducing the amount of people who make it here might not be such a bad thing of course. Quite apart from the tourist presence upsetting the local Navajo (who consider the Rainbow Bridge an important religious site), it seems that the waters of Lake Powell are further eroding the foundations of the Rainbow Bridge.

Thanks to Jen, JDP and Goomerator.

Here’s a mystery for a Friday morning – why is there a giant equilateral triangle in the desert near the city of Surprise, Arizona? And why does the city have such a silly name?

It looks to me like it could be an old airfield but it could, of course, be aliens!

Thanks: Craig Simpson