The Strangest and Most Interesting Things Ever Seen On Google Earth

In 2012, a group of Australian researchers "undiscovered" an island the size of Manhattan in the South Pacific. A mysterious place called Sandy Island had popped up on maps, northwest of New Caledonia. It even showed up as a black polygon on Google Earth. But when scientists sailed there in November 2012, they found open water instead of solid ground.

In an obituary for the island published in April 2013, the researchers explained why the phantom landmass had been included on some maps for more than a century, pointing to some human errors and a possible pumice raft. 

The world's largest island-in-a-lake-on-an-island-in-a-lake-on-an-island is a narrow, four-acre strip of land in Canada located at exactly 69.793° N, 108.241° W.

The nameless island (that little-tilde shaped squiggle of green) lolls across the center of a small lake, which is itself encapsulated by a slightly larger island. That resides inside one of a series of long finger lakes located 75 miles inland from the southern coast of Victoria Island, a land feature in Northern Canada.

Well, that's creepy.

A sizeable shipwreck is on Wingate Reef off Sudan. The S.S. Jassim sank in 2003 and now is one of the largest shipwrecks visible.

This giant pink bunny, bigger than a house even, is just laying in this field for some reason. 

You can see that cruise ship that tipped over and was on the news heaps now! 

The Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz., is where U.S. military planes go to die. Dubbed "the boneyard," this 2,600-acre cemetery of steel at coordinates 32 08'59.96" N, 110 50'09.03"W is closed to the general public, but Google Earth provides a high-resolution glimpse of what's inside: virtually every plane the military has flown since World War II — from the B-52 StratoFortress to the F-14 Tomcat — in various stages of decay.

Rumours surrounded this image! It looks like a bloody murder but apparently it's just a man and his wet dog.

As you can see from the search, in Zakouma National Park you can zoom in just far enough to get a really cool look at a herd of elephants running through the grass. The herd is just barely visible, being cut off by darkness.

Found him!

Seeing a tremendous herd of water buffalo, possibly over 200, making a dash across the Kigosi Game Reserve in Tanzania is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This heart-shaped lake is found in Columbia Station, Ohio, complete with trees for a border.

Colonel Sanders of KFC makes a spectacular appearance just off the Extraterrestrial Highway in Nevada. The Colonel represents how Mapvertising has grown ever since Google discovered how interesting images can look from space.

A tremendous triangle, with five concentric circles inside, is in the sand of Nevada. 

Tanzania is a pristine country where Google Earth found hundreds of hippos bathing in the giant pool in the Katavi National Park. 

Yellowstone National Park is filled with amazing natural beauty. The Grand Prismatic Spring, with its spectacular and brilliant colors, is found in Wyoming. 

Phantom Island was found in 2012, and then lost again the same year! Australians discovered the island near New Caledonia, and sent a ship to confirm it’s location, but it was not there. 

Newfound Google Earth images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. According to experts, this is a secret military base, and the structures are used for a variety of purposes including weapons testing, spy satellite calibration and testing of radar instrumentation. The most elaborate feature, an intricate grid of perfectly straight lines that weave back and forth every few hundred feet for 20 miles (33 kilometers), is most likely a Yagi antenna array, a device used for weather tracking and other atmospheric research.