Time Travel with Google Earth

Google Earth­’s his­tor­i­cal imagery fea­ture now includes aer­i­al footage of the after­math of World War II, allow­ing users to com­pre­hend the extent of post-war destruc­tion by com­par­ing pho­tos of cities as they are today to those of bombed out cities imme­di­ate­ly after the war.

Here’s War­saw in 1935, dev­as­tat­ed in 1943, and restored today. You can click here to see the pic­tures in a big­ger size.

For more imagery, includ­ing pic­tures of Stuttgart, Naples and Lyon, see the Google Earth blog.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.