Category Archives: Structures, History and Countries

Great Pyramid of Giza

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Great Pyramid of Giza

A very, very, very large tomb.

  • The Great Pyramid of Giza is also known as Pyramid of Khufu and Pyramid of Cheops.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza is believed to be a burial pyramid for Pharaoh Khufu, and is located near Cairo, Egypt.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza is said to have taken 10 to 20 years to be built, and was built around 2500-2600 BC.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza was originally 146.5 metres (481 feet) in height (although it is now about 9 metres shorter), being the tallest man-made structure until around 1300 AD, 3800 years since construction, and is equivalent to a modern 48 storey building.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only discovered Egyptian pyramid that has pathways that go up and down.
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The Great Pyramid of Giza
Image courtesy of Arvind Balaraman/ Free Digital Photos
  • It is estimated that 2,300,000 limestone blocks were used in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, most of them weighing 2 tonnes (2.2 tons) each, and the pyramid was covered with smooth casing stones which were taken and used to build some of the buildings in Cairo.
  • The entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza is 17 meters (56 feet) above ground level, so tourists use the Robbers’ tunnel to enter the pyramid.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza covers an area of 13 acres (5.2 hectares) and is oriented to the four main compass points.
  • Three pits sit around the Great Pyramid of Giza, all boat shaped, and a fourth hidden pit contained 1,224 wooden pieces of a boat, which was assembled over a period of 14 years, to make a 43.6 metres (143 ft) long boat.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Bibliography:
Great Pyramid of Giza, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza>

Great Wall of China

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Great Wall of China

A long, long, long wall.

  • Great Wall of China is a very long, military style wall made out of stone, dirt, bricks and many other materials, and the Chinese name for the wall is Cháng Chéng, which means ‘great wall’.
  • The Great Wall of China is located in northern China, and runs from east to west, along what was originally the northern border of China and was mainly built to protect the country from people invading or intruding from the north, and was also used to control who enters and exits China.
  • Northern walls were built around various Chinese states, some of which were built as early as 656 BC, and eventually these were joined to make the Great Wall of China.
  • Building, and joining the existing northern state walls to make the Great Wall of China, commenced around 220 BC and was built and rebuilt over centuries, during different periods of Chinese history.
  • The total length of all the sections of the Great Wall of China measures 21,196 km (13,171 miles) in length and gets up to 12 meters (39 feet) high, with the main Ming section just over 8,800 km in length.

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Great wall of China
Image courtesy of Cescassawin/ Free Digital Photos
  • Many parts of the Great Wall of China have disintegrated, been damaged, or been removed, and are not repairable, whilst other parts have been restored.
  • It is estimated that between 2 to 3 million workers died whilst building the Great Wall of China, and it is said that when a worker died, they were buried inside the wall.
  • The Great Wall of China was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
  • The Great Wall of China originally had between 10,000 and 24,000 watchtowers, with 1 million guards along the Ming section of the wall.
  • The Great Wall of China has been said to be the only man-made structure on earth visible from space with the naked eye, however this is a myth that started back in the 1750s, and the wall is only barely visible, with the right conditions, during low orbits of the earth.
Bibliography:
Great Wall of China, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China>

Parthenon

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Parthenon

Ancient structure from ancient times.

  • The Parthenon is a temple located in the Acropolis of Athens, above the city of Athens, in Greece.
  • The people of the city of Athens believed that the Greek goddess Athena, was the city’s patron, and so they built the Parthenon and dedicated to her.
  • The Parthenon was built in 447BC and completed in 438BC, while decoration was finished in 432BC.
  • In the 5th or 6th century AD, the Parthenon was turned into a church and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and later became a mosque, after Athens was invaded by Turkey in the 15th century.
  • The Parthenon is 13.72 metres (45 feet) in height, and was built with 81 Doric style columns and 4 Ionic columns, a total of 85 columns, made from white marble.

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Parthenon
Image courtesy of Jack Guilliams/Flickr
  • The word ‘Parthenon’ in Greek actually means ‘place of the virgin’ or ‘unmarried women’s apartments’.
  • In 1687 part of the Parthenon was destroyed by an explosion in the temple.
  • Originally, there were life-size marble sculptures in the Parthenon, many of which are now exhibited in museums.
  • Since 1975, the Parthenon has undergone various stages of reconstruction and restoration, directed by the Greek government.
  • The building of the Parthenon was supervised by the sculptor, Phidias, and the architects were Iktinos and Kallikrates.
Bibliography:
Parthenon, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon>

Statue of Liberty

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Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty, the liberty statue.

  • The Statue of Liberty is a neoclassical sculpture, depicting a woman or goddess with connotations of freedom, and can be found on Liberty Island, New York, in the United States of America.
  • The Statue of Liberty was designed by sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, and given as a gift to the United States by France as a symbol of liberty.
  • The exterior of the Statue of Liberty, known as its ‘skin’, is made from copper and was originally a copper colour, although after a number of years in the weather it gained a green patina, which is still present today.
  • The Statue of Liberty is 46 meters (151 feet) in height and weighs 204.1 tonnes (450,000 pounds).
  • The Statue of Liberty was originally built in France, and was dismantled into 350 pieces and then packed in 214 crates and carted by ship to America.
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Statue of Liberty
Image courtesy of Bill Longshaw/ Free Digital Photos
  • The official opening of the Statue of Liberty was on 28th October, 1886, and the statue has since become iconic of the United States.
  • The Statue of Liberty, originally known as ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.
  • Gustave Eiffel, the designer and engineer of the Eiffel Tower, was one of the main engineers used by Bartholdi for the Statue of Liberty.
  • On the tablet in one of the hands of the Statue of Liberty, the date “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” is inscribed, a reference to the day of United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
  • At the Statue of Liberty’s feet is a broken chain, and is the most overlooked feature of the statue.
Bibliography:
Statue of Liberty, 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty>

Mount Everest

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Mount Everest

A very, very, very, very large mountain.

  • Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world and its highest peak is 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level.
  • Mount Everest is located in the Himalayas and Everest’s peak is on the border of Nepal and China.
  • Mount Everest was named by Andrew Waugh, a Surveyor General of India, and the Royal Geographic Society, after Sir George Everest, Waugh’s predecessor, who actually opposed the idea.
  • The traditional name of Mount Everest is ‘Qomolangma’, sometimes spelled ‘Chomolungma’, in Tibetan, meaning ‘Holy Mother’, and ‘Zhumulangma’ or ‘Shengmu Feng’ in Chinese.
  • The first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, and they were part of the 9th British expedition.

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Mount Everest
Image courtesy of Bartmani/Flickr
  • On Mount Everest , the small black jumping spider, Euophrys omnisuperstes and a type of moss has been found at heights of 6,700 meters (22,000 feet) and 6,480 meters (21,260 feet) respectively.
  • Five thousand kilograms of rubbish has been removed from Mount Everest, on expeditions organised by climber Apa Sherpa.
  • There is very low oxygen at heights of 8000 meters (26,000 feet) or higher which makes it necessary for most climbers to use oxygen masks.
  • By the end of 2010, there were 5104 climbs of Mount Everest by 3142 people, and over 75% of these were in the last ten years (2001-2010).
  • In 1996, 15 people died whilst climbing Mount Everest; the most in one year, and 8 of those died in one day.
Bibliography:
Mount Everest, 2013 Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest>

Taj Mahal

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Taj Mahal

What is the Taj Mahal??

  • The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum, or tomb, in Uttar Pradesh, India, that is constructed mainly of white marble.
  • Shah Jahan, a Mughal Emperor, commissioned the Taj Mahal for his third wife and the building started the year after she died.
  • The Taj Mahal was built between 1632-1653.
  • The Taj Mahal is commonly viewed as a Muslim masterpiece and includes designs from Turkish, Islamic, Persian, and Indian architecture.
  • The Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983, and is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

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Taj Mahal
Image courtesy of Hal Brindley/ Free Digital Photos
  • At the Great Gate of the Taj Mahal there is calligraphy that says ‘O soul, thou art at rest, return to the Lord at peace with him, and he at peace with you’.
  • The garden of the Taj Mahal is 30o meters (980 feet) square.
  • By the 1800s parts of the Taj Mahal were badly damaged and restoration took place under the supervision of Lord Curzon, a British viceroy, which was completed in 1908.
  • The wooden structure of the tomb in the Taj Mahal is rotting, which could possibly cause the tomb to collapse by 2016.
  • Two million people visited the Taj Mahal in 2001.
Bibliography:
Taj Mahal, 2013 Wikipedia,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal>
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