Wonders of world: March 2012

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Man-made Wonders photos

Forbidden City - China

Great Pyramid of Giza - Egypt

Angkor Wat - Cambodia

Great Wall of China - China

Karnak Temple - Egypt

Machu Picchu - Peru

Taj Mahal - India

Temples of Bagan - Burma

Temples of Bali - Indonesia

Teotihuacan – Mexico

Civil Engineering Wonders photos

The Golden Gate Bridge - United States

Panama Canal - Panama

Itaipu Dam - Brazil

Empire State Building - United States

Delta Works - Netherlands

CN Tower - Canada

Channel Tunnel - France

Underwater Wonders

Underwater Wonders

Belize Barrier Reef - Belize

Deep Sea Vents - Ecuador

Galapagos Islands - Ecuador

Palau Reefs - Palau

The Great Barrier Reef - Australia

The Lake Baikal - Russia

The Northern Red Sea - Jordan

Man-made Wonders

Man-made Wonders

Angkor Wat - Cambodia

Forbidden City - China

Great Pyramid of Giza - Egypt

Great Wall of China - China

Karnak Temple - Egypt

Machu Picchu - Peru

Taj Mahal - India

Temples of Bagan - Burma

Temples of Bali - Indonesia

Teotihuacan - Mexico

Civil Engineering Wonders

Civil Engineering Wonders

Channel Tunnel - France

CN Tower - Canada

Delta Works - Netherlands

Empire State Building - United States

Itaipu Dam - Brazil

Panama Canal - Panama

The Golden Gate Bridge - United States

Great Pyramid of Giza

Great Pyramid of Giza

Seven Quick Facts

Location: Giza, Egypt

Built: Around 2560 BC

Function: Tomb of Pharoah Khufu

Destroyed: Still stands today.

Size: Height 480 ft. (146m)

Made of: Mostly limestone

Other: Tallest building in the world till 1311 AD and again from 1647 to 1874.

The age of the first ancient wonders of the world began with the pyramids of Sneferu, he built three pyramids and may have had a hand in others. His pyramid at Medum began as a step pyramid and was then modified to form the first true pyramid. He built two pyramids at Dahshur one called the Bent Pyramid because its upper part has a shallower angle of inclination than the lower part. Seneferu's Bent pyramid at Dahshur was originally planned as a true pyramid, but its geometry was altered at a point just above half its height. The angle of incline was decreased from 54º 31' 13'' to 43º 21'.

It's 756 feet long on each side, 450 feet high and is composed of 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each averaging 2 1/2 tons in weight. Despite the makers' limited surveying tools, no side is more than 8 inches different in length than another, and the whole structure is perfectly oriented to the points of the compass. Even in the 19th century, it was the tallest building in the world and, at the age of 4,500 years, it is the only one of the famous "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" that still stands. Even today it remains the most massive building on Earth. It is the Great Pyramid of Khufu, at Giza, Egypt.

The Great Pyramid of Giza stands on the northern edge of the Giza Plateau, located about 10 miles west of Cairo. It is composed of over 2 ½ million blocks of limestone, which weigh from 2 to 70 tons each.

It's base covers over 13 acres and its volume is around 90,000,000 cubic feet. You could build 30 Empire State buildings with its masonry. It is 454 feet high which is equivalent to a modern 48-story building. There are currently 203 courses or steps to its summit. Each of the four triangular sides slope upward from the base at an angle of 51 degrees 51 minutes and each side has an area of 5 1/2 acres. The joints between adjacent blocks fit together with optical precision and less than a fiftieth of an inch separates the blocks. The cement that was used is extremely fine and strong and defies chemical analysis. Today, with all our modern science and engineering, we would not be able to build a Great Pyramid of Giza. The Great Pyramid is thought to have been erected around 2600 BC during the reign of Khufu (Cheops). Next to the Great Pyramid stands 2 additional large pyramids. The slightly smaller one is attributed to Cheop's son and successor , Kephren. The other, still smaller, is attributed to Kephren’s successor, the grandson of Cheops, Mykerionos. To the south-east of the Great Pyramid lies the Sphinx. The total number of identified pyramids in Egypt is about 80.

Some believe that his pyramid at Giza was built by slaves but this is not true. One hundred thousand people worked on it for three months of each year. This was the time of the Nile's annual flood which made it impossible to farm the land and most of the population was unemployed. He provided good food and clothing for his workers and was kindly remembered in folk tales for many centuries.

There are three pyramids at Giza, each of which once had an adjoining mortuary temple. Attached to this temple would have been a covered causeway descending down to a valley temple, near the Nile. The 'great' pyramid itself is truly an astonishing work of engineering skill - for over four thousands years, until the modern era, it was the tallest building in the world.

Friday, March 30, 2012

The Great Wall of China

The history of the Great Wall is said to start from the Spring and Autumn Periods when seven powerful states appeared at the same time. In order to defend themselves, they all built walls and stationed troops on the borders. At that time, the total length of the wall had already reached 3,107 miles, belonging to different states.

In 221 BC, the Emperor Qin absorbed the other six states and set up the first unified kingdom in Chinese history. In order to strengthen his newly born authority and defend the Huns in the north, he ordered connecting the walls once built by the other states as well as adding some sections of his own. Thus was formed the long Qin's Great Wall which started from the east of today's Liaoning Province and ended at Lintao, Gansu Province.

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China in part to protect the Chinese Empire or its prototypical states against intrusions by various nomadic groups or military incursions by various warlike peoples or forces. Several walls had already been begun to be built beginning around the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger, stronger, and unified are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall.

Other purposes of the Great Wall have included allowing for border control practices, such as check points allowing for the various imperial governments of China to tariff goods transported along the Silk Road, to regulate or encourage trade (for example trade between horses and silk products), as well as generally to control immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.

The Great Wall of China is not a continuous wall but is a collection of short walls that often follow the crest of hills on the southern edge of the Mongolian plain. The Great Wall of China, known as "long Wall of 10,000 Li" in China, extends about 8,850 kilometers (5,500 miles).

A first set of walls, designed to keep Mongol nomads out of China, were built of earth and stones in wood frames during the Qin Dynasty

7 Natural Wonders

7 Natural Wonders

Aurora - United States

Grand Canyon - United States

Harbour of Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Mount Everest - Nepal

Parícutin Volcano - Mexico

The Great Barrier Reef - Australia

Victoria Falls - Zambia

Wonders of world

Wonders of world

Great Wall of China

Petra

Christ the Redeemer

Machu Picchu

Chichen Itza

Colosseum

Taj Mahal

Great Pyramid of Giza

The Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal of Agra is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, for reasons more than just looking magnificent. It's the history of Taj Mahal that adds a soul to its magnificence: a soul that is filled with love, loss, remorse, and love again. Because if it was not for love, the world would have been robbed of a fine example upon which people base their relationships. An example of how deeply a man loved his wife, that even after she remained but a memory, he made sure that this memory would never fade away. This man was the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who was head-over-heels in love with Mumtaz Mahal, his dear wife. She was a Muslim Persian princess (her name Arjumand Banu Begum before marriage) and he was the son of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir and grandson of Akbar the Great. It was at the age of 14 that he met Mumtaz and fell in love with her. Five years later in the year 1612, they got married.

The Taj Mahal is a white Marble mausoleum located in Agra, India. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is widely recognized as "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage.

Taj Mahal is the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements from Persian, Turkish and Indian architectural styles.

In 1983, the Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar component of the Taj Mahal, it is actually an integrated complex of structures. The construction began around 1632 and was completed around 1653, employing thousands of artisans and craftsmen.The construction of the Taj Mahal was entrusted to a board of architects under imperial supervision, including Abd ul-Karim Ma'mur Khan, Makramat Khan, and Ustad Ahmad Lahauri.Lahauri is generally considered to be the principal designer.

In 1631, Shah Jahan, emperor during the Mughal empire's period of greatest prosperity, was grief-stricken when his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died during the birth of their 14th child, Gauhara Begum.Construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632.The court chronicles of Shah Jahan's grief illustrate the love story traditionally held as an inspiration for Taj Mahal.

The Taj Mahal incorporates and expands on design traditions of Persian architecture and earlier Mughal architecture. Specific inspiration came from successful Timurid and Mughal buildings including; the Gur-e Amir Humayun's Tomb, Itmad-Ud-Daulah's Tomb and Shah Jahan's own Jama Masjid in Delhi. While earlier Mughal buildings were primarily constructed of red sandstone, Shah Jahan promoted the use of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, and buildings under his patronage reached new levels of refinement.