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The Phantom Town of Argleton

Argleton is a non-existent "phantom" town that appeared only on Google Maps and Google Earth.

It's an empty field in the middle of nowhere. Was Argleton a clever copyright trap used by mapmakers to see if their data are being copied by competitors or was it an honest mistake?

Google ain't telling, and since the town that didn't exist was discovered in 2008, it was erased from Google Maps.


Comments (0)

It's named after the tiled wall of a cafe in Bristol, England - just round the corner from my house.
There's more about it here, with a picture showing the wall: http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/ang_cafewall/index.html
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Oops, that didn't work.
Try again....
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=51.456961,-2.597532&panoid=OsQ8ktiSfq11TX20sJASmA&cbp=12,256.68051465171436,,0,4.6489361702127505&ll=51.456948,-2.597537&spn=0,359.963694&z=15&lci=com.youtube.all
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The Beaudry subway station in Montreal, inaugurated in 1966, had this exact illusion with the tiles on the interior walls. Unfortunately, it was renovated in 1999 and they scraped the illusion design.
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