Sunday, April 23, 2006

Stonehenge on Shortlist of New World Wonders - 2 Jan 2006

Stonehenge on shortlist of new world wonders
(Filed: 02/01/2006) Telegraph

Stonehenge has been short-listed in a seven-year poll to identify the seven wonders of the modern world.

The ancient stone circle in Wiltshire is the only British landmark in the top 21 short-list after tens of millions of public votes worldwide.

The Tower of London, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, St Paul's Cathedral, the London Eye and Greenwich Observatory were the other British contenders among the 77 nominated sites.

But all these popular London tourist attractions missed out as they were whittled down to 21.

The other 20 entries include the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India, the Colosseum in Rome and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The Kremlin, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Sydney Opera House and New York's Statue of Liberty are also finalists.

Voting will now continue throughout the year to select the seven wonders, which will be announced on New Year's Day 2007.

The poll was launched in 2000 by the New 7 Wonders Society, a Swiss group which aims to alert the world to the destruction of man-made heritage.

The rules are strict, with all nominations having to be man-made and to have been completed by 2000.

They must also be in an "acceptable" state of preservation, which excludes all ruins.

The list of the seven wonders of the ancient world was drawn up by Philon of Byzantium in the second century BC.

His choices were essentially a travel guide for fellow Athenians and were all located around the accessible Mediterranean basin.

Only the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is still standing and that makes it on to the new short-list along with another magnificent pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico.

The other six ancient wonders were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria

The full final 21 shortlist in alphabetical order is:

1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece
2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain
3 Angkor, Cambodia
4 Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico
5 Christ Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
6 Colosseum, Rome, Italy
7 Easter Island Statues, Chile
8 Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
9 Great Wall, China
10 Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey
11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
12 Kremlin, Moscow, Russia
13 Machu Picchu, Peru
14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Füssen, Germany
15 Petra, Jordan
16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
17 Statue of Liberty, New York, USA
18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom
19 Sydney Opera House, Australia
20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India
21 Timbuktu, Mali

http://www.endex.com/gf/buildings/ltpisa/7wonders.htm

from National Geographic website:

The Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages:
Roman Colosseum - Department of Geology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Colosseum of Rome
The Catacombs of Alexandria
The Great Wall of China
Hagia Sophia of Constantinople
Stonehenge
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing



The Seven Wonders of Today:
(compiled in 1931 after the completion of the Empire State Building):

Taj Mahal - LiveIndia.com
The Great Pyramids (Egypt)
Hagia Sophia (Turkey)
Leaning Tower of Pisa (Italy)
Washington Monument (U.S.)
Eiffel Tower (France)
Taj Mahal (India)
Empire State Building (U.S.)




Seven Wonders of the Ancient World:

Colossus of RhodesThe Pyramids of Giza
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The temple of Artemis at Ephesus
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
The Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria
The statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece
Colossus of Rhodes (statue of the sun god Helios)



Seven Natural Wonders of the World
(Content varies from different sources):

Rio de Janeiro HarborThe Grand Canyon (U.S.)
Iguazú Falls (Argentina)
Yosemite Valley's Giant Sequoias (U.S.)
Mount Everest (Tibet/Nepal)
The Harbor of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
The Nile River (Egypt)
The Aaurora Borealis (the northern lights)
Niagara Falls (U.S./Canada)
Rainbow Natural Bridge (U.S.)
The Petrified Forest (U.S.)
among others.



Listing the seven wonders of the world began during the time of the Greeks. The first lists were for travelers of that time, listing man-made objects of particular architectural or sculptural note. Today there are many such lists, including the Seven Modern Wonders, the Seven Wonders of the Medieval World, the Seven Natural Wonders, the Seven Wonders of Medicine, etc. There are many other such lists; none are definitive, of course.

The United Nations’ World Heritage Convention (part of UNESCO) has compiled an inventory of the world’s wonders that it plans to preserve and protect. To qualify, a site must be judged to have “outstanding universal value,” either “natural” like Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, or “cultural” like Haiti’s Citadel and Sans Souci and France’s Chartres Cathedral. Among the hundreds of sites listed by the World Heritage Convention are the ancient city of Cuzco in Peru, Virunga National Park in Zaire, the U.S.’s Statue of Liberty, Altamira Cave in Spain, and Sri Lanka’s sacred city of Anuradhapura. You can read more about some of the World Heritage Sites in the Society’s book Our World’s Heritage, published in 1987.

http://www.ralentz.com/old/misc/wired-wonders.html

· Wired 1.6: Seven Wired Wonders

· Other Wired Wonders

· In the Eyes of Other Wired Thinkers

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