Well it’s been a while since we had a real Friday mystery!

So, who can tell us why this group of people seems to have randomly formed a circle in the middle of the road in downtown Las Vegas?

Thanks to Claude Warren.

This gigantic image of the KFC Colonel was constructed from 65,000 1-foot-square tiles laid out in the Mojave desert.

The advert took six days to construct, and was announced to the public almost exactly a year ago. However the images were not available on the Google Earth default layer until now.

As part of the publicity stunt it was widely claimed that this was “the first logo to be visible from space”. Of course, regular readers (and owners of our book) will be well aware that this is a complete pile of utter nonsense.

For the truth about the first, and largest logo visible from space (or not, depending on how you define “visible” and “space”) see our post on the subject from last year.¹

Thanks to Rhodri Metcalfe Davies.

Avast Ye! Today, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day an’ we’ve got a barrel-load of piratey-themed sights fer ye landlubbers!

Las Vegas’ Treasure Island be havin’ a daily pirate battle, ‘ere the swashbucklers by defeated by th’ booty-shaking o’ “the sirens o’ ti”. Not yer usual kind o’ booty neither!

Them “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie-films wi’ buccaneer Johnny Depp, they be based on a children’s ride! Those children orta be workin’ the sail and swabbin’ the decks! Arrr!

There be a swashbuckling ship maze on the Isle of Wight! Shiver Me Timbers!

This even be a plane in middle o’ Santa Cruz, ‘ere they be callin’ it ‘Th’ Pirate Plane’! Flyin’ Pirates? Whaterenext!

Be seein’ you also The Pirate Skull of Vegas.

Thanks to these scurvy dogs: Juan Manuel Gil, bruv, Virtual Globetrotting and Munden.

In the comments on our last post one of our readers posted a link to this, er, revealing billboard advert parked in front of the Bellagio, Las Vegas.

Which of course raises a question about the suitability of these images to be seen by anyone who stumbles across them. On a regular Google search, you’d have to edit your preferences to turn off SafeSearch, but there’s no way to filter the images in Street View. Additionally, these pictures feature real people, their houses, their cars, and their cars’ numberplates. And none of these people gave their permission before these things were posted online.

It turns out Google have clearly though of this already - if you click “Street View Help” in any Street view window, you can read the following message:

Report Inappropriate Image
Google takes concerns about its services very seriously. Please use the link below to report concerns about an inappropriate street view.

Thanks to EAF and Chris DiBona.

Free UK daily paper The Metro published an article last week about a YouTube video¹ in which someone claimed to have found the shape of Jesus in a cloud, floating over Mount Sinai in Egypt.

We thought this was such a blatant (and totally lame) rip-off of our own Face of Jesus Found in Sand Dune that we’d better up the ante!²

First in Utah, we find a terrifying looking skull face…

Then in Nevada, we’ve got a Blues Brothers style one-eyed alien…

And finally in Kenya we’ve got… the Rock Eater Biter from the NeverEnding Story!

How long before the Metro steals this story I wonder?

See our other related posts for even more Google Earth Pareidolia:

• Irish Rock Face
• Face of Santa Claus
• Native American Listening to an iPod
• The Face of Mother Earth
• The Simian Messiah
• Face of Jesus Found in Sand Dune

Thanks to Jayden Brown, Vaughn Nelson and cruzito.

“Area 5″ is part of the Nevada Test Site where, along with other more famous areas, America has for decades tested various underground nukes, bombs and maybe even alien spacecraft.

A large part of Area 5 is used as storage for radioactive waste and what we see here is deep trenches dug in the sand. These trenches are then filled with large containers of radioactive waste and covered over.

Some of this radioactive material can be pretty nasty and the worst of it is known as “Transuranic Waste” which, according to Wikipedia, means

Waste containing more then 100 nanocuries of alpha-emitting transuranic isotopes per gram of waste with half-lives greater than 20 years.

More information on Area 5 and the Nevada Test Site.

Thanks: rotenman

BBC News today has a spectacular video clip of Las Vegas’ Stardust casino imploding as the final part of a controlled demolition. Of course, being Las Vegas, the demolition is done in an over-the-top style with a giant countdown clock, lasers and fireworks.

Google Earth’s image updates aren’t exactly daily, so we can still see the whole casino as it once stood and, judging by the aerial photo, it was a very large building. Of course, somehow the replacement casino Echelon Place is going to be even larger, taking up a massive 83 acres of land.

World’s-largest fact of the day: the Stardust’s electric sign was at one time the largest in the world so has been saved from the destruction and is now preserved in the Las Vegas Neon museum.

Wikipedia: Stardust Resort & Casino.

Thanks: Trina.

With high-resolution images all over the globe, Google Earth has captured many sporting events actually in-progress, so today we proudly present - The Top 10 different sports you can actually see people playing on Google Earth!

As a bonus, we’ve tried to work out how each game is going, and to make things even more difficult for ourselves, we’ve limited our search to ballgames only.

10. First let’s look at the 2nd of the 18-hole Las Vegas Country Club Golf Course, where we see the pin lying on the grass and the person closest playing their putt. Everyone else is standing around, probably telling him to hurry up.

9. As the world’s most popular sport, there must be hundreds of games of football being played at any one second. Here we see students playing “the beautiful game” at the University of Tokyo. However, this looks like it’s just a practise session as there’s no goalie at either end.

8. There’s people playing tennis all over the globe but for the top 10 we’ve chosen these two games of doubles being played on clay in Germany.

The eastern game is in full swing, and on the western court the players are standing in their service positions, and judging from the shadows it looks as if the southern team are about to serve!

7. There’s a good turnout for Lawn Bowls at Bell Vue Park Bowling Green in Newport, Wales. Sadly the bowls are just too small to be seen so we can’t tell how the games are going.

6. The stands are filling up at Yankee stadium, and there’s a couple of people on the field, but we’re a little too early for the game.

Hmm, we’ll need another baseball game in progress… here’s four!

In the thumbnail we see a batter up at the plate, and I think the bases are loaded.

5. The Shay in Halifax, England is also used for football games, but today it’s a home game for local rugby league team Halifax RLFC.

The ball is probably somewhere in the west of the pitch and the team to the north are on the offensive.

4. They’re playing lacrosse in Salamanca, New York. You can tell that it’s a men’s game as there are 20 players on the pitch (women’s lacrosse would have 24 players).

3. Here is a cricket match being played in the village of Hoylandswaine, north of Sheffield. It looks like they’re between plays, as the batsman has stepped back from the wicket to the west and we can see the other batsman and the bowler at the eastern end.

2. Here we see a packed gameday at Seahawks Stadium (now Qwest field) with 63,588 people watching the Nevada Wolf Pack at Washington State Cougars on August 31, 2002.

Google Earth Community member GEChump managed to identify the exact play seen in the photo, making this 11:37 remaining in the second quarter with the game tied at 7.

The Cougars eventually went on to win 31-7.

1. Finally, we find a tense one-on-one street-Basketball game being played in Rolde, Netherlands. Due to the left-hand player’s poor defence the right-hand player has just taken a shot at the basket, however they’ve missed and the ball is rebounding back.

Have you found a ball game on Google Earth not mentioned here? Let us know!

Thanks: heamit, mike, Kegan, seamus, Jeff, John Culbert, Jeni, Kristen, Mark, shuvman, vancantona, silkobilko, Crebbin, patmonahan, Majoska, pttech, Adam Rus, Ian, Arlene and the Google Earth Community.