Just north of Nekoma, North Dakota lies an abandoned, pyramid-shaped missile defence building; left empty since the US Army skipped town back in the ’70s, after what must be one of the shortest periods of operation of any Department of Defense initiative.

When fully operational, the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex (SRMC) contained a phased-array radar on each of the pyramid’s four faces - providing a complete wide-angle view capable of tracking incoming enemy missiles up to 360 km away.

In the event of an attack from an intercontinental missile, the site could respond with one of its thirty nuclear Spartan or sixteen Sprint missiles, protecting itself, the 50 or so people in Nekoma, and the Grand Forks Air Force Base just 100 km to its southeast.

On the 2nd of October 1975 – only one day after the site became fully operational – Congress voted to shutdown the program, and within a year the radar building had been gutted and the missiles removed.

Despite currently being in “caretaker” status, Google Earth’s historical imagery of the complex suggests it may have been secretly repurposed by the military! (Links to historical imagery require the Google Earth Plugin).

In 2006, one of the sewage/cooling lakes was filled in…

…but a different cooling pool was built between 1990 and 1997.

More information at the unofficial SRMSC website, and there’s an informative video on Youtube.

Google is at it again. As we have seen before, El Goog is sometimes asked to censor specific areas from public view. This time they are not just using the typical “this image is no longer available” message or an amusing Photoshop technique, but instead giving us these fun and exciting images to gaze upon.

While it’s probably true that if a 4th dimension were discovered then you’d see it here first, this is actually an active missile launch-site in North Dakota that houses the destructive one-and-a-half ton Minuteman III nuclear missile.

This is an intercontinental-range, silo-based, solid propellant ballistic missile system. Sounds dangerous! Even more shocking, a quick Google maps search of “Minuteman III ICBM Launch Facility” along with a random letter of the alphabet such as the letter a or the letter v will show hundreds of these launch sites, mostly situated in the central United States. These missiles have a range of 13,000km - which is over a quarter of the circumference of the planet!

One reader suggested the images bring to mind the Candy Land board game, but to me it’s more along the lines of an eerie backdrop for a new Willy Wonka movie. Either way, I can’t figure out why they chose to replace the images in this way.

What do you think is the reasoning behind this?

Thanks to Bob P.

Earlier this month the still-incomplete Burj Dubai building in Dubai officially surpassed the height of all other buildings, towers and masts worldwide, making it the tallest man-made structure on the planet.

Currently standing at a staggering 688 m, construction of Burj Dubai is set to continue for another year, and the final height will not be announced until the building opens in September 2009.

As you can see, the Google Earth image was taken while the building was still just a toddler, but you can get an idea of how it might look with a 3D model.

Before the Burj Dubai came along the process for deciding on the world’s tallest building was strangely complex - there’s actually 4 possible categories to consider - and there were separate records for supported masts.

Burj Dubai simplified the debate by taking the top spot in all possible categories, but it gives us an opportunity to revisit all the previous record holders, many of which have been updated since we previously looked at tall buildings and the world’s tallest towers.

Taipei 101 in Taiwan once held the “tallest building” record in 3 of the 4 possible categories with its architectural height of 508 m, highest occupied floor of 438 m and roof height of 448 m.

For the moment at least, Taipei 101 retains the title of largest completed building, but after the completion of Burj Dubai it will have to settle for being the location of the world’s fastest ascending elevator, which can get you up to the 101st floor at a gut-wrenching 37.7 mph!

Chicago’s Sears Tower was once the holder of all tall building records. Taipei 101 failed to conquer its record of “height with antenna”, at 529 m, but Burj Dubai has easily cleared that without the need of extra-reaching aerials.

Lastly, the rope-supported KVLY-TV mast in Blanchard, North Dakota, was officially the tallest man-made structure on the planet at a height of 629 m. The fact that Burj Dubai already tops this height without any external supports is testament to just how amazing an engineering feat it really is.

Further reading at the Wikipedia pages for Burj Dubai, Taipei 101, Sears tower and KVLY-TV mast.

It would seem that we have finally reached the absolute pinnacle of our continuing quest to discover the latest and greatest “World’s blankest blank“, as seen by satellite!

Yes you lucky people, prepare yourselves for… The World’s Largest Cow!

This is actually Salem Sue of New Salem, North Dakota, who is 38 feet high, 50 feet long, and was constructed from six tons of reinforced fiberglass back in ‘74 for the primary purpose of, um, bigging up the local dairy farmers I guess.

Over in the UK we have our own famous Concrete Cows sculpture, which were created four years after Salem Sue by Canadian-born artist Liz Leyh, but are only about half life size.

More about Salem Sue at Roadside America and more about Concrete Cows at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Simon Cope and Jason Smith.

Oh dear, it looks like an articulated lorry has rolled over near Bismark. I hope no-one was hurt.

The lorry in question is owned by Jim Palmer Trucking, and was blown over by winds in excess of 180kph.

If, for some weird reason, you enjoy seeing traffic accidents from above, you’ll love our previous post 9 (Possible) Traffic Accidents.

Thanks: a67
Updated: With thanks to Gary Powell and others in comments.