As we’re sure you’ll have heard by now, Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, has died in Los Angeles.

We first posted Neverland Ranch to the site back in April 2005, but at the time Jackson was in the news for very different reasons.

This is the theme park at Neverland – a property which Jackson built here in 1988 at a cost of $17 million. Neverland Ranch was Jackson’s permanent residency from 1988 until 2005, when the main house was eventually closed as a cost-cutting measure in the wake of the star’s declining fortunes.

Despite having been out of the property since 2005, it wasn’t until November 2008 that Jackson finally transferred the title deed to the Sycamore Valley Ranch Company, and in April 2009 a widely reported exhibition of Neverland’s contents opened in advance of all the items going to auction.

In truth however, the Sycamore Valley Ranch Company is a venture that Jackson himself set up¹ – and the auction was actually cancelled at the last minute. Meaning that at the time of his death, Michael Jackson still owned at least some proportion of Neverland Ranch itself, as well as all of its contents.

So maybe this isn’t the last we’ll see of Neverland – perhaps one day it will be reborn to become the Graceland of the pop-era.

Goodbye MJ, thank you for the music.

Welcome to the second annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week!

Death Valley National Park, part of the greater Mojave Desert, is an expansive 13,630 square kilometre natural preserve located on the border between California and Nevada. As its name would suggest, the valley has a climate that is most inhospitable to human settlement, but attracts over 700,000 visitors annually. It also holds the triple honour of being the hottest, driest, and lowest (in altitude) place in North America.

The valley’s floor receives an average annual rainfall of around 4 cm and lies predominantly below sea level. Its unique location between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Amargosa Range allows temperatures to regularly rise above 40°C in the summer months. In fact, the hottest temperature ever observed in the Western Hemisphere was recorded at Death Valley¹ in 1913 when the mercury hit 56.7 degrees Celsius!

Badwater Basin, pictured below, is a broad salt flat located at the southern end of the park. At 85.5 metres below sea level, it is the lowest point in the valley and in all of North America!

Given its low altitude, the basin drains a large area and can actually become a full-blown lake on rare occasions. Above right we see a Landsat-5 satellite image from back in February of 2005 when unusually high rainfall filled the basin for several days creating a salt lake.

Just a few miles up the valley you can clearly make out the colourful rock formations that make up another Death Valley attraction known as Artist’s Palette.

Along a stretch of road known as Artist’s Drive, a rich spectrum of colours can be seen in a relatively isolated space. The variation of red, pink, yellow and green hues are caused by the oxidation of different metals within the rock.

Toward the northern end of the park, Death Valley’s diverse topography can be seen in many different stages of wind erosion.

On the left, Zabriske Point overlooks an extreme erosional landscape composed of sediment from a prehistoric lake bed. The Mesquite Sand Dunes, some as tall as 40 meters, are pictured to the right and located at the northern edge of Death Valley National Park. Due to their relative proximity to Los Angeles, the dunes have been a generic desert backdrop for many Hollywood films, including the Star Wars series.

So there you have it, vast natural wonders and a week-long vacation condensed into a few paragraphs. Should you care to see it for yourself, or if you just want to find out more, Wikipedia (as always) has loads of information, as does the US National Parks Service.

Thanks to hexodus, Rob Smith, Keith, Beej and Jillian Johnson.

For just one frame of Google’s Street View for Charleston Road in Mountain View, we are given a completely unprecedented and unique glimpse inside the operation, as the camera is switched on inside the Street View Batcave.

Just like Batman’s underground lair, this warehouse appears to be the base for the whole operation. Panning around, you’ll find the dimly lit room¹ is filled in every direction with dozens and dozens of fully loaded camera cars, some featuring the older camera-only mounts, and others with the newer 3D laser mounts.

Other than the camera cars, there are several other fascinating things to see here, including this setup up of 9 LCD monitors mounted around a couple of old car seats, which would act like a 3D VR room. Is this for checking cameras? Reviewing recorded material? Or live monitoring of the drivers’ progress?

Also of note around the garage are some support vans, lots of bits of computer junk and, in an image captured immediately outside the building, several mysterious black vehicles.

Thanks to VGT.

Obscure geography trivia time: where would you find the steepest street in the world?

You might guess San Francisco. If you’re a Guinness Book of Records-reading smart alec, you might say New Zealand. As it turns out, you’d be wrong - probably. In fact, nobody seems quite sure which is the world’s steepest, and then there’s the problem of what exactly counts as a street anyway.

But we’ve looked into it, got out protractors out, and can now reveal the not-quite-scientifically-verified Google Sightseeing Top Six World’s Steepest Streets! And happily, the intrepid Street View car has struggled its way up (or down) all of them. Here they are, in reverse order:

6) Dornbush Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

In the East Hills area of the city, this quiet-looking residential street has been surveyed at a 31.98% grade - that’s a 17.7° slope. The Street View car missed out one section of the steepest part, which is one-way in the downhill direction. Check out the heavy-duty concrete staircase.

5) Maria Avenue, Spring Valley, California

Here’s a prime example of the “We’ve got a grid system and we’re damn well going to stick to it” school of city planning. Google’s Terrain view shows how the north-south street pattern has been laid out with no regard whatsoever to the steep contours - in fact you have to wonder whether the planners had ever even visited the site!

Maria Avenue marches straight up the southern slope of Dictionary Hill, attaining a surveyed grade of 32% (17.7°) just north of Chestnut Street. This section of road seems to be paved with concrete, and is cut off from the section above: Street View leaps straight across the gap, missing out this part of the road. The next block to the east would have been even steeper - Buena Vista Avenue is shown on the street map, but the builders understandably admitted defeat there.

4) Baxter Street and Fargo Street, Los Angeles, California

We’ll call this one a tie. These two streets are right next to one another in the Silver Lake district of LA, and both have been measured at 32%, but they get the nod over Maria Avenue on account of being altogether more exciting.

Baxter Street goes up and up and up… but then it goes down almost as steeply, giving the alarming impression that you’re about to drive off a cliff as you approach the summit.

Fargo Street is much shorter - only one block - but that’s plenty long enough for the cyclists who enter the annual Fargo Street Hill Climb. In 2008 one nutter rode up it 101 times in one day.

3) Eldred Street, Los Angeles, California

Just pipping Baxter and Fargo, with a 33% (18.3°) grade at its topmost end, LA’s steepest is in the Highland Park area. It rises 67m over only 400m, which presents some interesting challenges for its residents, according to an entertaining LA Times article.

2) Baldwin Street, Dunedin, New Zealand

Despite being listed in the Guinness Book of Records (and having that sign at the bottom), Baldwin Street doesn’t make the top slot. True, the top section attains an impressive 35% (19.3°) grade; true, it’s quite a slog walking up, even with the steps at the side¹; and true, sliding down it in a wheelie bin is a very bad idea; but it’s not the steepest. Unless anyone else knows better, the winner is…

1) Canton Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The signs at the top say “Do Not Enter”, and in slippery conditions you’d do well to heed them. Canton Avenue, a short cobbled street in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighbourhood attains a whopping 37%, or 20.3°, gradient, making it the steepest public road in the United States - and, quite possibly, the world. This YouTube video shows what happens when you try and cycle up it, and this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has more photos, giving an idea what it’s like to live there in winter. You can bet the residents of this house at the bottom of the hill are quite glad of that crash barrier out the front.

Honourable mentions

Here are a few other contenders that, for various reasons, didn’t quite “make the grade”…

West 28th Street, San Pedro, Los Angeles

Apparently this is officially the steepest LA street, at 33.3% (18.4°, just pipping Eldred), but looking at it on Street View, the steep portion is pathetically short. Next!

Ffordd Pen Llech, Harlech, Wales

This lane, said to be the steepest in Britain, plunges down the side of the steep hill topped by Harlech Castle. Sadly, Street View hasn’t reached rural north Wales yet, but there is high-resolution aerial imagery. The sign at the top claims it to be a 40% (21.8°) slope, but that seems dubious. And in any case, look at the sign just below the gradient warning: “Anaddas i fodur”. Unsuitable for motors. Disqualified on a technicality…

Waipio Valley Road, Hawaii

Now we’re talking: 45% gradient, or 24.2° - just look at those contour lines! Sadly, although this potential record-breaker is paved, it is restricted to 4WD vehicles - and in any case, it’s out in the wilds of the north of the Big Island, and with no houses on it you can hardly call this one a street. Still, it looks like quite a drive, judging by the pictures on this page.

This is the Turning Torso tower in Malmö, which at 190 metres is Sweden’s tallest skyscraper. The most striking thing about this tower is that it appears to be twisted around its axis. It has nine segments of five-story pentagons that are offset from one another, meaning that the topmost segment is set at ninety degrees to the ground floor.

The Turning Torso was designed by world famous Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava (some of whose work we’ve featured in the past), and represents part of a growing trend for elaborately warped and twisted “torqued towers“.

In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park the new M.H. De Young Museum was completed in October 2005 - replacing the original building that had been damaged in an earthquake. To prevent damage to the new building, it can move almost a metre thanks to a system of sliding plates and fluid dampers. It’s also entirely clad in copper, which will eventually oxidize, taking on a green colour reflective of the surrounding vegetation.

From many places around the park, the most striking feature of the building is the 44 metre Hamon Tower, the impressive twist of which can be clearly seen from both an aerial and ground-level point of view.

Tower designers aren’t just rotating their towers either - although still under construction in Google’s images, the China Central Television Headquarters building was completed in December 2008, and its design almost defies belief. Especially when you consider that this area is also prone to earthquakes!

Technically the CCTV building isn’t a traditional tower, but rather a “continuous loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 381,000 square metres of floor space”. This is probably best summed up by the building’s local nickname - “Big Shorts”.

There are several other torqued towers around the world that are either in planning, or already under construction. However I wonder how many of them will be delayed or cancelled due to the current economic climate?

• 1 World Trade Center, New York City, (formerly known as the Freedom Tower), will have a roof set at 45° from the bottom.
• The Infinity Tower, Dubai, will feature a 90° twist like the Turning Torso, but will be nearly twice the height.
• The Chicago Spire, Chicago, also designed by Santiago Calatrava, will be 160 metres taller than the Sears Tower.
• The Burj al-Taqa, Dubai, will feature a twisted hyperboloid design, and will generate all its own energy.

Finally, check out the totally insane Signature Towers and equally ludicrous Dubai Towers Dubai which are both planned for construction in Dubai.

See the amazing skyscraperpage.com for more jaw dropping future skyscrapers.

Thanks to stephan and Vectoor.