No-one could deny that it’s got more and more stupid with each passing episode, but somehow many of us are still hooked on Lost¹, the TV show about large group of good-looking people stuck on a mysterious island.

In what was the most expensive pilot episode of all time, a plane crashed onto a beach. Part of this expense can be attributed to the use of a real passenger jet as a set for the downed aircraft.

According to Lostpedia, the fictional Oceanic flight 815 was a Boeing 777, but the part was actually played by a chopped-up Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. The nose section of this plane is kept under cover, on location in Hawaii:

Before it began its TV career the plane was owned by Delta airlines and had flown some 58,841 flight-hours without crashing onto any desert islands. The fuselage section of the plane is kept closer to the beach where filming happens:

Previously on Google Sightseeing: 4,8,15,16,23,42 - finding the Lost island

Thanks: Lostpedia

It’s two stadiums in one! While looking at the most recent Imagery update for Google Earth on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, I was trying to match up the older Google Maps images with the newer Google Earth images.

I thought that a large landmark such as the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu would make lining up the images easy, but I was very confused that there’s two completely different stadiums on the same spot - on Google Maps image is of an American Football stadium, whereas the new Google Earth Imagery shows a Baseball diamond.

The stadium has four movable sections, each 3.5 million pounds, which rotate to form two entirely different stadiums. Not for long though as in 2007 the transformer stadium will be permanently locked into American Football mode. More information on Wikipedia.

A year ago today we posted about a Giant Alien Dolphin in the Pacific Ocean. It turned out that this was actually a group of islands known as French Frigate Shoals, which has since received a small image update on Google Maps. Although there’s still not very high-res imagery, you can now more clearly see the islands, and they no longer look like a giant alien dolphin.

Now they look like an embryonic earth-dwelling dolphin

The islands consist of a 20-mile long crescent-shaped reef with twelve sandbars, and other than the numerous plant, bird and marine life, they’re currently inhabited by a total of 2 biologists.

More on French Frigate Shoals at Wikipedia.

P.S. You can always see what we posted a year ago by using the “one year ago today…” feature in the sidebar.

The last battleships ever built by the United States are known as “Iowa class” and were named after the states of Missouri, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Iowa. The four ships were built in the 1940s and between them have served in almost every major U.S. battle between then and the 1990s when they were decommissioned. There’s loads more detail about the ships on the Wikipedia page.

The USS Wisconsin is currently berthed in Norfolk, VA. It is in an Inactive Reserve status, meaning that it is still a commissioned warship of the U.S. Navy, but not in active service.

The USS New Jersey is now a museum at Camden, New Jersey.

The USS Missouri is berthed in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

The USS Iowa is part of the previously posted Suisun Bay reserve fleet in California (it’s the big one on the end). The Iowa is the only ship of the four which is currently not open to the public but has recently been acquired by Stockton, California where it will be a museum.

Thanks: Robert Amos for compiling links to all four ships and many other people for submitting at least one of the ships.

On the Hawaiian island of Oahu is the Dole Pineapple Plantation where the former largest-in-the-world maze is to be found. The maze is designed to resemble a pineapple (although it is upside down to our view) and is made of 11,400 colourful Hawaii plants, including pineapples.

Thanks: Phil, Dave Lartigue, Rob B, Eric Ubersax

The Hawaiian Islands are at the end of a chain of volcanoes that began to form more than 70 million years ago. Each Hawaiian island is made of at least one volcano, and the island of Hawai`i, the southernmost of the Hawaiian islands, consists of five volcanoes, and is the location of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Here’s a look at three of the most interesting volcanoes on the island. I didn’t bother doing them all as unfortunately none of the island is in high-resolution yet

Mauna Kea is Hawaii’s tallest volcano at 4,205 meters. It’s so tall, that snow forms on it’s upper reaches each winter (several meters deep!) and the name itself means ‘White Mountain’. It hasn’t erupted for around 4,500 years however.

Mauna Loa is Earth’s largest volcano, and fittingly it’s name means ‘Long Mountain’. It covers more than half of Hawai`i and accounts for 85 percent of the land-mass of all the Hawaiian islands combined. It is also considered one of the world’s most active volcanoes having erupted 33 times since 1843, most recently in 1984. Mauna Loa is certain to erupt again, and is carefully monitored for signs of volcanic activity.

Kilauea is perhaps the most active volcano in the world, it’s been erupting continually since 1983! Perhaps this is where it gets it’s name, which translates to ’spewing’ or ‘much spreading’. Shown in our thumbnail is the cinder-and-spatter cone of Pu‘u‘Ō‘ō, which looks fantastic from up here with a plume of steam stretching southwards, and even huge areas of glowing orange lava!

There’s lots more fascinating information about all volcanoes on the island available at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website.

Many thanks to Alex, Gayle Olson, Fernando Gilbert, Mark Hardman, Luke Gibson, neil, Dakota, SlantyOD, Layla, Keith, Adam, Kirk, Jim McKeeth, JP, RPirolli, Kyoji, Jason, Eric, Clinton Neville, Nelson, Tony Tabor, Sam, Charles Sieg and Adam Crownoble.

Updated

To the West of Hawaii there’s the French Frigate Shoals, which look a lot like a Giant Pacific Alien Dolphin Thing. The dolphin shape is actually a number of small islands, one of which has been enlarged to create an airstrip.

Thanks: mathematizer & danny

Not all of Honolulu is hi-res yet, but check out Diamond Head State Monument, which appears to be, er… inside an old volcano?