Google Sightseeing » Texas

Just When You Don’t Need Prada

James Turnbull — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:39:57 +0000

Driving along the isolated Highway 90 in Texas, you may be hoping to find somewhere to buy water, food, or perhaps petrol for your car.

And look! There on the horizon, a fast approaching convenience of some kind!

However, undoubtedly the last thing you need to cope with the unforgiving landscape is a new pair of Prada shoes.

But hey, it’s better than nothing, right? Unfortunately, even if the street view driver did want a new Italian designer handbag, he or she would still be out of luck, as it’s closed.

In fact, this store is always closed, and has been since 2005 when it was first, er… opened. As it turns out, this particular Prada boutique is a permanent art installation, created by cruel Scandinavian artists Elmgreen and Dragset.

Thanks to Diego Gonzalez.

Locations: Texas / Categories: Street Views

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Apollo 11

RobK — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:42:24 +0000

Unless you’ve been living on the, er, Moon, you can hardly have failed to notice that today¹ marks the 40th anniversary of the historic landing of the Apollo 11 mission – during which, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to ever set foot on the Moon.

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.

The Eagle touched down at 8:17pm GMT on July 20. Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface at 2:56am GMT on July 21, at which time it was still July 20 in the United States. ↩
Yes, we thought sound couldn’t travel through space, too. ↩

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

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St. Patrick’s Day in the USA

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:52:03 +0000

March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, which was originally the annual feast of the best known of Ireland’s patron saints¹, and today a worldwide celebration devoted to all things Irish.

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.

Despite the fact that he was actually Welsh. ↩
Unfortunately I can’t even find an image of it in the historical GE imagery. ↩

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

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Top Ten Confusing Place Names

Ian Brown — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:59:42 +0000

Following the example of Alex’s Rudest Place Names post, I hereby present my top ten confusing place names.

For each of these sights, I picture a confused driver arriving in town, rolling down the car window and asking a passer-by “Can you tell me where I am?”

10. Smile, KY