Let’s take a look at some of the more unique street circuits around the world…

1. Monte Carlo, Monaco – Since 1929, the streets of Monte Carlo have been home to a motor race each year, and today the principality is home to Formula One’s Monaco Grand Prix. A lap around the 3.34 km (2.075 mi) circuit goes directly underneath the Grand Hotel via a tunnel and ricochets around a swimming pool next to the city’s harbour. The track continues to hold events each year in late May.

2. Norisring, Nuremberg, Germany – Built on top of former Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, this track is 2.3 km (1.4 mi) in length and uses the grandstand from Zeppelin Field as it’s centrepiece. The track is host to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters series and the Formula 3 Euro Series each year.

3. Cleveland, Ohio, USA – The Grand Prix of Cleveland was held from 1982 to 2007 on the fully functioning Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Ohio. The airport had to be shut down once a year for a week to get converted into a 10-turn racetrack. Traces of the track are hard to see these days on Google Maps, but if you look closely you can see some tires stacked up near turn 8, various asphalt patches along the racing line on the taxiways (used to try and smooth out the bumpy track for the lightweight race cars), and some tire tracks from the pit stalls. Races are rumoured to return in 2010 but nothing has been announced yet.

Keep an eye out for follow-up posts on more street circuits around the world, including some that you can lap with the Street View car! Stay tuned!

Locations: Germany, Monaco, Ohio / Categories: Stadiums and Sport

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This is no highway-induced hallucination however: it’s the headquarters of the Longaberger Company, famous for its handmade wooden baskets. Its founder, Dave Longaberger, was a man with a dream — and that dream included going to work in a seven-storey basket. When lesser men than Dave told him it couldn’t be done, he said: “If they can send a man to the moon and bring him back home, they can build a building shaped like a basket.” And he was right.

The building cost $300 million $30 million and took more than two years to build; it was completed in December 1997¹. The statistics are impressive: it takes the form of a 160:1 scale model of Longaberger’s top-selling Medium Market Basket, more than 60 m long and 30 m tall. The frame is made of steel, with a stucco finish cunningly designed to create a basket-weave effect (which also seems to confuse Street View’s face-blurring technology!) The handles are 100 metres long and weigh 75 tons each, and are even heated to prevent ice building up in winter and falling through the glass roof. (They also create a neat shadow.) On the side of the building, replicating the brass logos on the normal-sized baskets, are giant name plates weighing 340kg each and covered in gold leaf.

That’s not the only big basket in these parts, however. Over in nearby Dresden², where the Longaberger company was founded, there’s a 14-metre long picnic basket, made of real maple wood. Sadly, the imagery here is not high-enough resolution to see it in all its glory (I think this is it), but you can see pictures here. And at the Longaberger Homestead, a kitsch olde-worlde village/outlet store in Frazeysburg, there’s a giant apple basket. Again, the imagery isn’t very good here, so be sure to check out these ground-level photos (complete with giant apples!)

Read more about the creation of the Longaberger HQ at Elevator World, or visit the company website.

Locations: Ohio / Categories: Buildings, Street Views, Weirdness

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Apollo 11 was launched on a Saturn V rocket at 9:32 AM on July 16, 1969 from Launch Complex 39-A at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The same pad is also used for Space Shuttle launches, including the recent launch of Endeavour. Apparently, when a fully fuelled rocket is on the pad, the minimum safe distance for people is 5km! However, on the day that the Street View car visited it did get close enough to get a distant view of the launch tower rising above the swampland.

At the nearby Kennedy Space Center we can see a replica Space Shuttle, as well as the Rocket Garden (a display of Redstone, Titan and Atlas rockets) and the Space Mirror (or at least its shadow) – a 13-metre high memorial to those who have lost their lives in space.

Over at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Saturn V rocket that we looked at four years ago is now under cover unfortunately. Still, at least we can gaze down on the very building in which the brainy Mission Control folks kept things running smoothly.

Of course Houston wasn’t the only place keeping tabs on the astronauts. As anyone who has seen the movie The Dish will know, at the time Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, it was on the “wrong” side of the Earth; which meant the historic TV signal was actually relayed via Australia.

The best pictures came from the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, but the signal was also picked up at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra. Sadly, Parkes is only visible in low-resolution (although you can glimpse the dish through the trees on Street View), and Honeysuckle Creek, while in high-res, was closed in 1981 and subsequently demolished.

And what of the first man on the moon? Neil Armstrong was born in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, and during his school years his family lived here on West Benton Street. The town is obviously proud of its famous son: in the vicinity we can find roads named Neil Armstrong Drive, Lunar Drive, Gemini Drive, Saturn Drive and Apollo Drive – the latter four located near the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, where exhibits apparently include the Gemini VIII spacecraft, Apollo 11 artefacts, a moon rock, and “multimedia presentations of the sights and sounds of space”².

Finally, let’s have a look at the moon itself! Google Moon has come on a bit since it was unveiled on the landing’s 36th anniversary, meaning you can even look around in Street View-esque panorama mode at the landing sites. And, in case you haven’t heard, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently managed to photograph 5 out of the 6 Apollo landing sites, with sufficient detail that you can make out the lunar module descent stages, and even, in one case, the trails of footprints left by the astronauts! Google has some way to go to match that sort of resolution, but as it happens, they are holding a special Google Earth news conference later today…

There’s more to see on our previous coverage of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, you can watch a real-time recreation of the landing at We Choose The Moon and join in with various celebratory events at NASA’s site.

Locations: Australia, Florida, Ohio, Texas / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Spacecraft, Street Views, Structures

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Over here in Ireland and the UK, we have been known to celebrate with vast quantities of Guinness. Over in the US however, they like large scale annual celebrations involving crazy things like temporarily dying the Chicago River green (which sadly hasn’t yet been captured on Google Earth²).

But in today’s post we’ll be looking at some of the places that St. Patrick has found a permanent home in the USA.

This is St Patrick’s park in Indiana, where they have created a 400 metre long homage to their namesake, entirely in the medium of trees. Which is apt, given how much of the colour green gets bandied around on the 17th of March.

We’ve visited the original Dublin already on Google Sightseeing, but there are at least nine cities called Dublin in the USA alone!

See for yourself: Dublin, California; Dublin, Georgia; Dublin, Indiana; Dublin, New Hampshire; Dublin, North Carolina; Dublin, Ohio; Dublin, Pennsylvania; Dublin, Texas; and Dublin, Virginia.

In New York City we find St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a spectacular Neo-Gothic cathedral in midtown Manhattan that has become ingrained in Hollywood movie history, after being featured in several movies including 2002’s Spider-Man.

So, where else has St. Patrick and the influence of Ireland made a lasting impression around the world?

Happy Paddy’s day!

Thanks to Chris R.

Locations: California, Georgia, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia / Categories: Buildings, Large Type, Movie Locations

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Royse City Fututo, one of three surviving in Texas

Built from fibreglass-reinforced polyester-plastic, Futuros are around 4 metres high by 8 metres across, and have super-cool airplane-style hatch entrances.

Waterside Futuro in Berlin, Germany

Suuronen’s aim was actually to design a ski-cabin¹, one that would be “quick to heat and easy to construct in rough terrain”, and in this respect he succeeded – a Futuro House can be placed on virtually any terrain, requiring only four concrete supports, and thanks to the integrated polyurethane insulation and electric heating system, even in the most extreme conditions it only takes around thirty minutes to achieve a comfortable temperature inside.

Futuro as part of the Canberra Space Dome & Observatory, Australia

Despite the obvious awesomeness of these UFO-shaped homes, by the mid 70s they had been withdrawn from sale – although this was mainly due to the 1973 oil crisis, which had sent the price of plastic skyrocketing.

Front and back of the Pensacola Beach Futuro House, Florida²

Around sixty of the original Futuros have been accounted for over the years, but there are still many that remain undiscovered. The most complete archive is at futuro-house.net (there’s another with an embedded map at archinform.net), but it seems to have been left to stagnate for a number of years – perhaps Google Earth will provide the means for all of the missing Futuros to be rediscovered?

Double Futuro House, Franklin, Ohio

It should also be pointed out that the moulds for making Futuros apparently still exist… about time for a revival don’t you think?

Futuro in Covington, Kentucky

Here’s an article that includes a floor plan, some images of a Futuro being helicoptered into position, as well as some great shots of people inside.

Locations: Australia, Florida, Germany, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas / Categories: Buildings, Street Views, Weirdness

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The Free Stamp – a pop art sculpture created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen quickly became the centre of controversy. It was originally commissioned by Standard Oil of Ohio, but an ownership change and fears of a public backlash in an economically struggling city meant construction was halted. The components were kept in storage for a number of years.

It was finally put on public display in Willard Park in the early 1990s, when BP America agreed to donate it to the city but pay for the maintenance. The stamp is 8m tall and almost 15m long, its bulk clearly apparent on Street View.

Unfortunately, it appears that the current economic climate has also had an impact on the location.

Now if only we can track down the world’s largest inkpad …

Thanks to Rich Holmes and Keith.

Google Sightseeing has previously featured a number of works by the same artist: Saw, Sawing, Dropped Cone, and Spoonbridge and Cherry.

Locations: Ohio / Categories: Large Type, Street Views, Structures

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Take for example this cool customer – he spots the Googlemobile cruising down his street, and decides his patented bicycle ’skid and turn’ manouvre should be executed, maybe with the objective of sending a small puff of dust into the eyes of the unsuspecting driver.

As our intrepid daredevil starts to make the turn everything seems to be going perfectly – but suddenly the stunt falls apart, and moments later he lies in a bizarre tangle with his two-wheeled friend.

As the camera car moves on – rather heartlessly I might add – we see the boy in further distress as he presumably tries to free himself by way of a reverse roly-poly.

As the Google car continues on down the street the poor lad appears to be lying flat on his back, presumably regaining his composure. I do hope he was alright.

Thanks to Jason O and Streetviewfun.

Locations: Ohio / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views

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The incident that caused the car to burst into flames took place before the Google car arrived on scene, as the smoke from the fire is visible all the way up the street. It’s worth pointing out though that the frame that should have shown the wreck in most detail has been replaced with a shot taken on a different occasion.

What might have happened here?

Via Virtual Globetrotting.

See our previous posts Expensive Car Crash and Multi-Vehicle Car Accident Captured on Google Street View.

Locations: Ohio / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views

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• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Austin, Texas
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Fairbanks, Alaska
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Rockford, Illinois
• Richmond, Virginia
• Spokane, Washington
• St. Petersburg, Florida
• Tampa, Florida

Finally, Google have also added imagery for the few roads that run through Yosemite National Park, California, which enables us to see some pretty stunning scenery.

Here’s El Capitan, a 910 metre vertical rock formation that’s a popular challenge for rock climbers, and some spectacular Giant Redwoods living up to their name!

Read the full story at the Google Lat Long Blog, read more about El Capitan and Giant Redwoods at Wikipedia.

Locations: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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I wanted to illustrate what this pool party might look like from the ground, and I found this QuickTime VR image of a pool party in progress. Now I’m wondering what kind of geek makes a Quicktime VR image of a pool party?

Thanks to James Boorman-Padgett.

Locations: Ohio / Categories: Buildings, Crowds, Other Vehicles

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