Nauset Beach, MA USA Webcam
September 11, 2011
Nauset is a beach in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. Barnstable is coextensive with Cape Cod.
The town of Orleans, near Nauset Beach was first settled in 1693 by Pilgrims from the Plymouth Colony who were dissatisfied with the poor soil and small tracts of land granted to them. Orleans was named in honor of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, in recognition of France’s support for the 13 colonies during the American Revolution, and because the town did not want an English name, as they had been captured twice by the British during the war.
The Nauset tribe lived in what is present-day Cape Cod Massachusetts, living east of Bass River and lands occupied by their closely related neighbors, the Wampanoag. Due to their ocean proximity, they had a greater reliance on seafood than other tribes.
Nauset Light, is a lighthouse in Eastham, Massachusetts. It is a cast iron plate shell lined with brick and stands 48 feet high. Nauset Light was constructed in 1877 and was originally one of two lights in Chatham. It was moved to Eastham in 1923 to replace the Three Sisters of Nauset, three small wood lighthouses that had been decommissioned.
Plattling Station, Germany Webcam
September 3, 2011
Plattling station is a central railway hub in eastern Lower Bavaria in southern Germany.
The first station building for Plattling station was opened in 1860 as the Bavarian Eastern Railway Company‘s eastern route between Straubing and Passau. On 16 April 1945 the entire station was destroyed in a bombing raid that lasted just seven minutes. The station building which was fully demolished during this attack was rebuilt again after the Second World War on the same spot. In the night of 2–3 June 2008 the historic locomotive shed burned down to its foundation walls, having served at the time as a warehouse for a paper factory.
Sedona, Arizona Webcam
May 12, 2011
Sedona is a city that straddles the county line between Coconino and Yavapai counties in the northern Verde Valley region of the U.S. state of Arizona.
The famous red rocks of Sedona are formed by a layer of rock known as the Schnebly Hill Formation. The Schnebly Hill Formation is a thick layer of red to orange-colored sandstone found only in the Sedona vicinity. The sandstone, a member of the Supai Group, was deposited during the Permian Period.
The Yavapai and Apache tribes were forcibly removed from the Verde Valley in 1876, to the San Carlos Indian Reservation, 180 miles southeast. 1500 people were marched, in midwinter, to San Carlos. Several hundred lost their lives. The survivors were interned for 25 years. About 200 Yavapai and Apache people returned to the Verde Valley in 1900 and have since intermingled as a single political entity although culturally distinct.
In 1956, work on a new chapel, the Chapel of the Holy Cross, was completed. Inspired by the architecture of the Empire State Building, this chapel appears to rise 250 feet out of a thousand foot red rock formation characteristic of Sedona. The sunset strikes the chapel from the front, naturally lighting the chapel in the evening. This webcam is located at the Sedona Airport.
Mont Blanc, France Webcam
May 8, 2011
Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps, Western Europe and the European Union.
The mountain lies between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Haute-Savoie, France and the location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the Arve Valley in France. It rises 15,782 ft above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence.
The Mont Blanc massif is being put forward as a potential World Heritage Site because of its uniqueness and its cultural importance, considered the birthplace and symbol of modern mountaineering. In 2007, Europe’s highest outhouses (two) were helicoptered to the top of France’s Mont Blanc at a height of 13,976 feet. The dunny-cans are emptied by helicopter. The facilities will service 30,000 skiers and hikers annually; thus helping to alleviate the deposit of urine and feces that spread down the mountain face with the spring thaw, and turned it into ‘Mont Noir’.
On 8 June 2007, Danish artist Marco Evaristti draped the peak of Mont Blanc with red fabric, along with a 20-foot pole with a flag reading “Pink State”. He was arrested and detained earlier on June 6 for attempting to paint a pass leading up to the summit red. His aim was to raise awareness of environmental degradation.
Chelyabinsk, Russia Webcam
April 30, 2011
Chelyabinsk is a city in Russia, located just to the east of the Ural Mountains, on Miass River.
Fortress Chelyaba, from which the city takes its name, was constructed on the site in 1736; the city was incorporated in 1781. Around 1900, it served as a center for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the decades after the Finnish Civil War in 1918, some 15,000 “Red” Finns defected into the Soviet Union. Most of them were transferred to Chelyabinsk via railway.
During World War II, Joseph Stalin decided to move a large part of Soviet factory production to places out of the way of the advancing German armies in late 1941. This brought new industries and thousands of workers to Chelyabinsk. Several enormous facilities for the production of T-34 tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers existed in Chelyabinsk, which became known as “Tankograd” (Tank City).
Chelyabinsk has had a long association with top-secret nuclear research, though this is more properly applicable to Chelyabinsk Oblast as a whole, as nuclear facilities such as Chelyabinsk-70 (Snezhinsk) are, or were, located far outside the city. A serious nuclear accident occurred in 1957 at the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, 150 km north-west of the city, which caused deaths in Chelyabinsk Oblast but not in the city. The province was closed to all foreigners until 1992.
Santa Brígida, Grand Caneria Webcam
April 12, 2011
Santa Brígida is a Canarian municipality in the northeastern portion of the island of Gran Canaria in the Province of Las Palmas of the Canary Islands.
The Canary archipelago consists of seven large and several smaller islands, all of which are volcanic in origin. The islands rise from Jurassic oceanic crust associated with the opening of the Atlantic. Underwater magmatism commenced during the Cretaceous, and reached the ocean’s surface during the Miocene. The islands are considered as a distinct physiographic section of the Atlas Mountains province, which in turn is part of the larger African Alpine System division.
The islands were visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians. According to the 1st century AD Roman author and philosopher Pliny the Elder, the archipelago was found to be uninhabited when visited by the Carthaginians under Hanno the Navigator, but that they saw ruins of great buildings. This story may suggest that the islands were inhabited by other peoples prior to the Guanches.
Before the arrival of the aborigines, the Canaries were inhabited by prehistoric animals; for example, the giant lizard (Gallotia goliath), or giant rats (Canariomys bravoi and Canariomys tamarani).
Island of Madeira Webcams
April 10, 2011
Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies just north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union.
The archipelago itself is a series of oceanic volcanic islands that date back to the Miocene (about 20 million years ago), and constructed from a hotspot in the Earth’s crust of the African Tectonic Plate.
The island of Madeira is at the top of a massive shield volcano that rises about 3.7 mi from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, on the Tore underwater mountain range. The volcano formed atop an east-west rift in the oceanic crust along the African Plate, beginning during the Miocene epoch over 5 million years ago, continuing into the Pleistocene until about 700,000 years ago.
This was followed by extensive erosion, producing two large amphitheatres open to south in the central part of the island. Volcanic activity later resumed, producing scoria cones and lava flows atop the older eroded shield. The most recent volcanic eruptions were on the west-central part of the island only 6,500 years ago, creating more cinder cones and lava flows.
The archipelago is considered to be the first territorial discovery of the exploratory period of the Portuguese Age of Discovery.
Coldfoot, Alaska Webcamera
April 6, 2011
Coldfoot is a census-designated place (CDP) in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. The population was 13 at the 2000 census.
Coldfoot primarily serves as a truck stop on the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. North of Coldfoot, there are no services for 240 miles, until Deadhorse.
The town was originally a mining camp named Slate Creek, and around 1900 got its present name when prospectors going up the nearby Koyukuk River would get “cold feet” and turn around. In 1902 Coldfoot had two roadhouses, two stores, seven saloons, and a gambling house.
The Coldfoot truck stop was founded by Iditarod champion Dick Mackey who started his operation by selling hamburgers out of a converted school bus. Truckers helped build the existing truck stop and cafe.
Coldfoot has been featured on the third and fourth seasons of Ice Road Truckers, a Canadian reality television series airing on the History Channel. The show, which dramatizes trucking on the Dalton Highway, often features truckers transporting equipment to the oil companies located in or around the Prudhoe Bay area. Coldfoot Airport, on the west side of the Dalton Highway, consists of a 4,000-foot gravel strip.
