In an absolutely enormous update, Google have in the last few minutes launched brand new Street View images for the whole of the UK – bringing the total coverage to a reported 96% of all UK roads.

The images cover roads from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, and actually extend all the way beyond, right up into Shetland.

Google have recorded images of a further 210,000 miles of roads, bringing the total to approximately 246,985 miles of coverage.

We expect lots of new fascinating and probably scandalous sights to be discovered in the next couple of days, so be sure to leave a comment with a link to anything you find, and we’ll update this post with your suggestions.

In 1859 a wealthy man bought a piece of land overlooking the River Clyde, on which he built a mansion. When the mansion was expanded in 1892, an access road over the Overtoun Burn was required, and so the Overtoun Bridge was built.

50 years later a bizarre series of suicides began to take place on the bridge, whereby dogs would regularly throw themselves to their deaths from the parapets.

Since the suicides began, it is claimed that at least 50 dogs have killed themselves here; all at virtually the same spot, and all of them long-nosed breeds.

Why they jumped is still a mystery.

Many theories have been put forward; hypnotic water sounds, some sort of interference from a nearby nuclear base, electrical impulses, and even ghosts – but it took a canine psychologist (and a Channel 5 documentary) to provide a vaguely plausible explanation.

Bing maps view of Overtoun bridge and one of the estate’s buildings.

Dr David Sands found that Mink were breeding under the bridge, and posits that their strong scent is simply irresistible to inquisitive dogs. Combine this with a dog’s low viewpoint, and perhaps one can see why a dog would leap over the edge to their death.

However, with around 20,000 mink in Scotland, it seems a little strange that dogs aren’t chucking themselves off more bridges all over the country.

So, why do you think all these dogs decided to end it all from the Overtoun Bridge?

More info: Overtoun Bridge at Wikipedia.

Trompe-l’œil, or Trick of the Eye, is a long-established art technique where an artist uses very realistic imagery to create the illusion that the things shown in the image are actually three dimensional.

The technique has been popularised on the Internet in recent years by pavement artists such as Julian Beever and Edgar Mueller, but as far as we’re aware, their creations have never lasted long enough to be captured by any of Google’s cameras. However a number of buildings around the world have been adorned with large Trompe-l’œil murals, many of which which can be seen on Street View – if you can get to exactly the right spot…

This massive mural on the Lani Nalu Plaza building in Honolulu features Hawaii’s last monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani, alongside Duke Kahanamoku, the father of modern surfing. The figures are shown on a towering wave that threatens to crush three onlooking children.

Mana Nalu mural by John Pugh

From the right angle the effect is so realistic that when some passing firefighters first saw the mural, they actually rushed over to save the children. Don’t believe this isn’t 3D? Look how the illusion is completely shattered by moving only a few metres down the road!

Mana Nalu mural by John Pugh

Sometimes trompe-l’œil can have practical applications too. In Paris, the Saint-Georges Theatre was transformed from a featureless modern carbuncle into a stylish original building, simply with the addition of some convincingly realistic paintwork.

Saint-Georges Theatre by Dominique Antony

Some of the largest murals in the trompe-l’œil style have been made by Richard Haas, such as at 1211 North LaSalle Street, Chicago, where in 1980 he converted a plain 16-story 1929 building into a gargantuan tribute to Chicago School architecture.

Three sides of the building are covered in trompe-l’œil – here we can see the south face, which uses elements from several Louis Sullivan creations and includes a “reflection” of the Chicago Board of Trade Building in the painted windows.

Homage to the Chicago School by Richard Haas

Another artist working in the same medium is Eric Grohe, who converted the plain exterior wall of a shopping wall into a realistic sweeping vista onto a stunningly realised Niagara Falls.

Niagara by Eric Grohe

However in terms of sheer realism, we’ll have to come back to John Pugh, whose publicly visible work we’ve managed to find in several other places.

Siete Punto Uno (7.1) by John Pugh (created to commemorate the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake)

Bay in a Bottle, Santa Cruz, California, by John Pugh

Standin’ on the Corner Park, Winslow, Arizona, by John Pugh

There are hundreds more examples around the world – what other trompe-l’œil murals do you know of?

Exactly 20 years ago today, on the 11th February 1990, the anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was released from a 27-year incarceration in an event that was broadcast live all over the world.

The South African courts convicted Mandela on charges of sabotage committed while he led the military arm of the ANC in their struggle against apartheid.

In 1964, Mandela began his sentence on Robben Island (which we covered in detail last year), where he spent the next 18 years.

In March 1982 Mandela was transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, south of Cape Town, where he was held at the maximum security building, which is today known as the admission centre. He described Pollsmoor Prison as “the truth of Oscar Wilde’s haunting line about the tent of blue that prisoners call the sky.”¹

In 1988 Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison, a low security farm prison that was often used as stepping stone for releasing lower-risk political prisoners. It was here that the world’s media gathered to record the moment that Mandela was finally released, 27 years after he was first imprisoned.

Of course that was just the beginning. Following his release, Mandela helped lead the way towards multi-racial democracy in South Africa, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in 1994 became the first President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.

Today there are roads, squares and statues of Nelson Mandela all over the world, all standing as testament to the positive change he helped make possible. This is Nelson Mandela Gardens in Millennium Square, Leeds, and a statue of him in Parliament Square, London.

Sandton Square in Johannesburg was renamed Nelson Mandela Square, and features a 6 metre statue of the former president. Sadly there’s no Street View, but you can actually just about see the statue in the satellite imagery, right in the centre of our thumbnail image (ground-level photo).

In November 2009 the United Nations General Assembly announced that from 2010 the 18th of July, Mandela’s birthday, would be known as ‘Mandela Day’ to mark the enormous importance of his contribution to world freedom.

Last week’s catastrophic 7.0 earthquake in Haiti is estimated to have killed 200,000 people, injured 250,000 and left 1.5 million people homeless.

Following the quake, Google quickly released a KML file that included imagery taken by the GeoEye satellite within hours of the occurrence of the disaster.

Today brings the news that Haiti has within the last few hours been hit by a second, 6.1 magnitude earthquake. The extent of the damage caused by this strong aftershock is not yet clear.

This sad news coincides with Google’s addition of even more up to date imagery to Google Maps and Earth. The new imagery was gathered on January 17th (Sunday), and must be aerial imagery, as the resolution is extremely high – somewhere around 15cm per pixel.

Here we can see a makeshift camp set up for survivors – and the SOS message they have scrawled on the ground nearby.

We saw the destruction of the presidential palace in our post last week, but this new imagery really hits home just how cataclysmic the quake was.

We can see a US plane at the airport which appears to be unloading supplies, but as is being reported widely, this aid isn’t reaching the people fast enough. Aid group Partners in Health estimate that 20,000 people are dying each day who could have been saved with access to proper medical attention.

There are so many factors compounding Haiti’s problems it’s almost overwhelming. For example, Haiti’s national prison was heavily damaged in the quake – allowing a reported 4,000 prisoners to escape. They’re currently in the process of reclaiming old territory, starting gang wars, and attacking the police and UN forces.

A spokesperson for the UN called this “the worst disaster the UN has ever confronted”, and reading through the continually updated Wikipedia page on the disaster gives some idea of what they’re up against.

If you wish to donate to the efforts to provide aid to the people of Haiti, you may visit Google’s Disaster Relief page.¹