Long-time GSS readers may recall the story of Bennie the Dinosaur, who we originally spotted way back in February 2006.

Bennie was originally employed as the mascot for a now-defunct chain of cigarette shops and in his lifetime had moved around a bit, even changing sex along the way.

The last we’d heard of Bennie was that he’d been moved to the garden of a former employee of the company, but that garden was not covered on Google Earth.

That garden is now visible, but in that time there’s been some shocking developments, and all that we can see are Bennie’s charred remains:

The official word is that Bennie died during a forest fire, but with the dinosaur’s well-publicised past involvement in cigarette advertising it’s hard to accept that story.

A much more likely explanation is that, as with a staggering 800 people in the US each year, Bennie died as a result of carelessness with his cigarettes.

Thanks to Glenn Rice.

As the Street View car passed Google’s California head offices, the Googleplex, hundreds and hundreds of Google Employees came out to form a huge welcoming committee for the passing camera car.

There’s loads of things to see, as many employees have clearly prepared for the event! For example, here’s a life-size yellow Street View guy:

Elsewhere, in a clear nod to our very own discovery of a fight on Street View, a couple of Googlers are engaged in a slight altercation.

In another self-referential move, a couple of people are taking part in a tiny Tour-de-France!

The in-jokes don’t stop there either – one Googler took the opportunity to make a “Web 2.0″ marriage proposal! See his website to find out if she accepted.

There’s tons more silliness all up and down the street, as it seems the entire Googleplex came out for the event – so have a browse and share your best finds in the comments!

Thanks to GmapsMania.

The Phoenix Shot Tower in Baltimore was erected in 1828 and stands at 71.3m, which at that time made it the tallest structure in the United States, as well as the world’s largest free-standing masonry tower¹.

The shot tower was invented by an Englishman in 1783, and soon spread across the globe as the preferred method of making lead shot for shotguns.

The process involves pouring molten lead through a copper sieve at the top of the tower, so that droplets fall the height of the tower, taking the form of tiny perfect balls during their descent. The lead then splash-lands in a water bath at the bottom, which sets the pellet.

These days shot is made using a centrifuge, so now only a handful of the once-ubiquitous shot towers exist worldwide.

The largest shot tower that was ever built is the 80.16m tall Clifton Hill Shot Tower in Melbourne.

Probably very impressive in 1882 when it was completed, but by the standards of today’s tallest towers, it’s tiny!

More info on shot towers at Wikipedia.

Within the Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona, is one of the largest stockpiles of discarded vehicle tyres¹ in the US – perhaps as many as 10 million individual tyres.

Despite being just south of a town called Goodyear, this is actually the work of a company called Envirotech Industries International, who have been collecting tyres here for the last 10 years.

The company used to recycle the tyres, and intended to start converting the old tyres into fuel – until the state of Arizona closed them down for multiple serious fire-code violations. Envirotech subsequently went bankrupt, leaving the State of Arizona responsible for the facility.

The imagery at Microsoft’s Live service has better resolution, allowing us to see individual tyres that have fallen from the huge piles (one of the breaches of the fire regulations was “Obstructed fire roads”).

If a fire were to break out here, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office have stated that it could “burn unhindered for over ten years”. To put that into perspective, in 1999 it took 250 firefighters 5 days to get a fire at a facility in Ohio under control – and it took a further nine years and more than $32 million to clean up the mess.

There are an estimated 3 billion waste tires stockpiled in the United States, and when they catch fire the environmental fallout can be catastrophic. Government reports stated that the pollution from the 1999 Ohio fire killed more than 10,000 fish in a nearby creek.

The Sonoran Desert National Monument is a small part of the 311,000 km² Sonoran Desert – home to several endangered species, and the most biologically diverse of all the North American deserts.

Read the full story at azcentral.com.

Thanks to kjfitz.

Dotting the landscape here in Mountainville, New York, is a collection of bizarre shapes and interesting shadows. This is actually a huge outdoor sculpture garden called the Storm King Art Center.

Founded in 1960 by Ralph E. Ogden as a gallery for Hudson River School painters, today the 202 hectares (500 acres) of landscaped lawns, fields and woodlands are home to hundreds of sculptures.

New York resident sculptor Mark di Suvero has several pieces here, such as Mozart’s Birthday and Mother Peace (more info and pictures are available at the Storm King site).

Mother Peace, 1970

Di Suvero was in construction as a young man, but after a serious accident started using an arc welder to create large outdoor sculptures incorporating scrap metal and structural steel – like the enormous Pyramidian (this photo at Flickr gives a good sense of scale).

Pyramidian, 1970

Internationally renowned Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz created the seemingly accurately titled “Sarcophagi in Glass Houses” that we can see here (more info and ground-level pic).

Sarcophagi in Glass Houses, 1989

Another American, David von Schlegell, is responsible for several pieces on permanent display here titled “Untitled”, including this one, “Untitled” (ground level picture).

Unititled, 1969

Not wanting to be left out, the UK is represented by the brilliant Andy Goldsworthy, whose 694 metre (2,278 foot) long Storm King Wall can be seen falling into the lake, and emerging from the other side to take a meandering path through the trees (more info and ground-level photo).

Storm King Wall, 1998

There are many other recognisable artworks dotted about the grounds, including Adam by Alexander Liberman and Free Ride Home by Kenneth Snelson, as well as others that I haven’t been able to find any information about, like this large boat-like thing perched on a small island, or this mish-mash of what looks like huge red tubes.

The Wikipedia page on Storm King is short but to-the-point, whilst the official site would have to try very hard to be any more rambling and wordy. There’s a Flickr Pool with some good images too.

Thanks to Ryan, Wayne Citrin and Adrian Likins.