WORLD of WONDER

2010-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

Description:

Location: Shanghai (China)
Constructed: 1997 – 2008
Height: 492
Use: Office, hotel, museum, observation, parking garage, retail
Floor count: 101
Architect: Kohn Pedersen Fox

Burj Dubai

2010-01-21T03:21:00.000-08:00

Description:

The tallest skyscraper has been unveiled to the world. After years of construction the well known Burj Dubai now called Burj Khalifa has been completed leaving far behind Taipei 101.
Burj Khalifa | World’s Tallest Structure | DUBAI | 828m | 2716.5ft | 162 floors
Use: hotel, restaurants and offices
Architect: SOM
Developer: Emaar

2010-01-09T07:25:00.001-08:00

2010-01-09T07:23:00.000-08:00

Burj Al Arab Hotel

2010-01-09T01:00:00.001-08:00

Description:

Briefly marketed as "the world's first seven-star hotel," the Burj Al Arab is 1,053 feet high and is the world's tallest hotel.
Standing on an artificial island 280 meters from Jumeirah beach, it is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It was built to resemble the sail of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. The hotel was completed in 1999.

The World Project

2010-01-09T00:47:00.000-08:00

Description:

These 300 islands, positioned to form the shape of a world map, are currently being constructed 4 kilometers offshore from Dubai in Gulf waters. 'The World' is being built primarily using sand dredged from the sea.
Prices for the islands will range from $15 million to $45 million. The project is scheduled to be completed by next year.

The ACROS Fukuoka

2010-01-09T00:31:00.000-08:00

Description:

In Fukuoka City in Japan, they have an amazing building called “ACROS Fukuoka” with two very distinct sides: one side looks like a conventional office building with glass walls, but on the other side there is a huge terraced roof that merges with a park. The garden terraces, which reach up to about 60 meters above the ground, contain some 35,000 plants representing 76 species. A huge semicircular atrium and the triangular lobby provide contrast to the greenery, in this space is a symphony hall, offices and shops.

Hang Nga Guesthouse

2010-01-09T00:21:00.000-08:00

Description:

The house is owned by the daughter of the ex-president of Vietnam, who studied architecture in Moscow.
It does not comply with any convention about house building, has unexpected twists and turns, roofs and rooms. It looks like a fairy tale castle, it has enormous “animals” like a giraffe and a spider, no window is rectangular or round, and it can be visited like a museum.

Cubic Houses

2010-01-08T15:01:00.001-08:00

Description:

The original idea of these cubic houses came about in the 1970s. Piet Blom has developed a couple of these cubic houses that were built in Helmond.
The city of Rotterdam(Netherlands) asked him to design housing on top of a pedestrian bridge and he decided to use the cubic houses idea. The concept behind these houses is that he tries to create a forest by each cube representing an abstract tree; therefore the whole village becomes a forest.

Habitat 67

2010-01-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Description:

Expo 67, one of the world’s largest universal expositions was held in Montreal. Housing was one of the main themes of Expo 67.
The cube is the base, the mean and the finality of Habitat 67. In its material sense, the cube is a symbol of stability. As for its mystic meaning, the cube is symbol of wisdom, truth, moral perfection, at the origin itself of our civilization.
354 cubes of a magnificent grey-beige build up one on the other to form 146 residences nestled between sky and earth, between city and river, between greenery and light.

Kansas City Public Library

2010-01-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Description:

This project, located in the heart of Kansas City(Missouri, United States), represents one of the pioneer projects behind the revitalization of downtown.
The people of Kansas City were asked to help pick highly influential books that represent Kansas City. Those titles were included as ‘bookbindings’ in the innovative design of the parking garage exterior, to inspire people to utilize the downtown Central Library.

The Basket Building

2010-01-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Description:

The Longaberger Basket Company building in New Yark, Ohio might just be a strangest office building in the world. The 180,000-square-foot building, a replica of the company’s famous market basket, cost $30 million and took two years to complete. Many experts tried to persuade Dave Longaberger to alter his plans, but he wanted an exact replica of the real thing.

Forest Spiral

2010-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

Description:

Construction started on: 1998
Construction finished on: 2000
Located At: Darmstadt, Germany
Architecture: FriedensreichHundertwasser(Austrian architect)
Specification: The structure with 105 apartments wraps around a landscaped courtyard with a running stream. Up in the turret at the southeast corner, there is a restaurant, including a cocktail bar.

Third first lady

2010-01-08T07:47:00.001-08:00

The Guardian, London

JACOB Zuma, president of South Africa, 67, is marrying Tobeka Madiba in a private family ceremony at his homestead in rural KwaZulu-Natal province. Madiba, 36, will be Zuma’s third current wife and his fifth marriage overall. He is also reported to be engaged to another woman.

The Zulu tribe, the biggest ethnic group in South Africa, practises polygamy by tradition. Zuma once told an interviewer: “There are plenty of politicians who have mistresses and children that they hide so as to pretend they’re monogamous. I prefer to be open. I love my wives and I’m proud of my children.” Zuma is to vow to love and protect Madiba, with whom he has three children, in a Zulu ceremony known as udwendwe. She will become South Africa’s third first lady, joining Sizakele KhumaloZuma, whom Zuma has known for 50 years and married in 1973, and Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, whom he married two years ago.

There were two further Mrs Zumas who are no longer with him. He divorced Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, now home affairs minister, in 1998. Kate Mantsho Zuma committed suicide in 2000, leaving a note describing her marriage to him as “24 years of hell”. Zuma is said to have more than 10 children, and possibly as many as 19.

Zuma has paid lobolo to the family of Madiba, described as a socialite from Durban, as custom demands. She has attended numerous official events with the president but it appears the wedding has been postponed until now because of Zuma’s work commitments. He was elected president in April.

No known date has been set for what could be Zuma’s sixth wedding. Gloria Bongi Ngema is understood to have presented umbondo (gifts) to the Zuma family last week, customarily a precursor to marriage. Originally from Durban, Ngema works for IBM in Johannesburg and has a son with Zuma named Sinqumo.

South African law recognises multiple marriages, although fewer young South Africans are entering into them because they are seen as expensive and old-fashioned. The cultural practices of Zulus and other groups are protected by the constitution but can provoke controversy.

Zuma played up his Zulu heritage during the election campaign and spent Christmas at his homestead in Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal. He relaxed by shooting birds with a slingshot, drinking (traditional umqombothi beer) and taking part in a chess tournament.

It emerged recently that a reported R65m (£5.3m) expansion of the Nkandla residence is under way with new houses being built to accommodate Zuma’s three wives.

Jeremy Gordin, Zuma’s biographer, said he was surprised how little attention Zuma’s latest wedding had received. “I find it interesting that there were all kinds of people making belligerent comments on his polygamy, but that died down after the election. People now seem to be raising their eyebrows less.” He added: “Zuma is adamant about polygamy. It’s his right as a Zulu. But he only took one wife to Italy to meet the pope.”

Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 05-01-2010

The Crooked House

2010-01-08T04:05:00.000-08:00

Description:

Construction started on: January 2003
Construction finished on: December 2003
Located At: Sopot, Poland
House Architecture: Jan Marcin Szancer (famous Polish artist and child books illustrator) and Per Dahlberg (Swedish painter living in Sopot)

A year of living on the edge

2010-01-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

Even by the standards of Pakistan's volatile political history, 2009 was a year of turmoil and disarray, with governance in a shambles for much of the year and the embattled country lurching rudderless to confront one challenge after another. In a year that generated more gloom than hope, the leadership void was the defining theme.

At year-end, Pakistan plunged into deep political uncertainty in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that declared the National Reconciliation Ordinance ultra vires of the Constitution. The note of defiance struck by the government – despite declarations to the contrary – and its efforts to whip up Sindhi provincial sentiment promised a perfect storm of trouble ahead, raising the spectre of a prolonged gridlock in governance and a clash between a dysfunctional executive and the newly empowered judiciary.

The divided political reaction to the latest display of judicial activism encouraged the PPP-led government to insinuate "selective justice" and play victim in an effort to obfuscate the public debate about the accountability of elected officials. Meanwhile, the apex court's verdict elicited criticism from an unexpected quarter – prominent liberals who argued that the court had taken a step too far, grounding its judgement on reasoning that encroached on the domain of other state institutions.

In a year of judicial activism, critics depicted the Supreme Court's actions ranging from striking down the NRO, inquiring into loan write-offs, determining the price of sugar and questioning the pricing of petroleum products as evidence of populist grandstanding and injudicious overreach.

While the political manoeuvring that followed the NRO judgment reflected the Zardari-led government's efforts to rally support it also betrayed its deep insecurity. This lack of confidence revealed itself during 2009 in the president's continual reading of criticism as conspiracy. It was also exemplified by President's Zardari's combative speech on the second anniversary of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

These actions left the country in the midst of a profound sense of foreboding about the future. An uneasy calm prevailed at the dawn of the new decade. The prospect of a jittery government distracted by the aftershocks of the NRO verdict triggered widespread public fears about instability at a time of unparalleled challenges for the country.

The public mood grew progressively glum in the context of the government's lacklustre performance and its singular lack of public-policy initiatives. By mid-2009, the despondent public mood was reflected in a number of opinion polls. The Pew organisation found 89 per cent of Pakistanis were dissatisfied with the way things were going – up sharply from two years ago. A poll conducted by the International Republican Institute recorded similar findings: 84 per cent of the people polled saw the country headed in the wrong direction.

If the government failed to provide leadership, the enigma of a political opposition unable or unwilling to fill this vacuum – not by destabilising the coalition but providing a clear policy direction – seemed even more baffling. Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif remained the country's most popular leader according to opinion surveys. But the PML-N's pronounced reluctance to play the role of a vigorous and thoughtful opposition, staking out positions on pivotal issues, hurt his public-approval ratings and attracted criticism that the party remained trapped in the past. Even so, the party lost no opportunity to remind Zardari of his broken promises on scrapping the 17th Amendment.

The year went down as the deadliest in Pakistan's history. A record number of bombings shook the country, casualties among civilians and security personnel shot to a new high, as did IED explosions and suicide attacks. 2009 saw one- third of all terrorist-related violence recorded since 2001. This took the number of people killed in terrorist-related violence in the past decade to an estimated 25,000.

Much of the violence represented a bloody backlash to the military assaults undertaken in Swat and South Waziristan – the country's biggest airborne counterinsurgency operation and ground offensive, respectively. These actions showed the government's resolve to fight militancy and the military's capacity to act decisively. While they re-established the government's writ and drove out the Taliban, the wave of terrorist reprisals that engulfed the country warned of the scale of the challenge ahead.

The operations made remarkable gains in the "clear" phase. Swat and Malakand saw the return in record time of tens of thousands of displaced people. But the fate of the "hold and build" phase remained open to question, while the tardy and inadequate government response to post-conflict stabilisation in Swat raised doubts about the sustainability of the security gains that had been attained.

At the close of the year the military operation had expanded to Orakzai and Khyber, but concerns about whether the militants had been dispersed rather than defeated suggested that Pakistan's counterinsurgency efforts would be a long haul.

The danger that these efforts could be jeopardised and the army overstretched by the demands of the new regional strategy announced by President Obama became a key question as the New Year approached. The military escalation signalled by Washington's troop surge and the expansion in drone-launched missile strikes in the tribal areas heightened fears of further destabilisation of the country. Islamabad's concerns and anxieties were conveyed to Washington during its strategy review, but the enunciation of the new policy left Pakistan facing the predicament of maintaining stable ties with the US while preserving its vital interests.

And this at a time when the trust deficit between the two nations seemed to widen rather than diminish. This was amply illustrated by the furore in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar Bill. The enhanced assistance came gift-wrapped with conditionalities that many Pakistanis saw as gratuitous meddling in their internal affairs and as an infringement of national sovereignty.

The strains evident during 2009 in an increasingly tenuous relationship suggested that the year ahead would see ties being tested by a number of issues: approaches to stabilising Afghanistan, dealing with North Waziristan, the evolving Washington-Delhi-Kabul nexus and Washington's aversion to engaging with the sources of Pakistan-India tensions.

Among the few bright spots in the otherwise bleak political landscape was the 7th National Finance Commission Award agreed between the elected representatives of the four provinces. This reflected a consensus that had eluded the country for close to two decades and was made possible by the spirit of democratic accommodation shown by all the provincial leaders, especially the chief minister of the Punjab.

The most consequential development of 2009 was the reinstatement of the chief justice in March, which marked the triumph of the two-year campaign for the rule of law waged by the legal community, civil society and the opposition. This turned Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry into a symbol of the popular yearning for an independent judiciary. It also changed the political equation in the country by establishing the judiciary as an independent power base.

Economic management continued to fall short of the challenge at hand. It assumed the form of seeking more external financing to address the symptoms of the country's deep-seated economic problems. This meant continuity with an inglorious tradition of not using the fiscal space provided by external resources to decisively attack the causes of the structural imbalances: low revenue, narrow tax base and budget and balance-of-payments deficits.

There was no qualitative break with a strategy of over-reliance on external financing by creating the means or culture for enhanced domestic resource mobilisation. A "stabilisation" or crisis-management strategy shorn of any long-term policy to address structural problems exposed an unsustainable approach that increased foreign liabilities and merely postponed rather than resolved the crisis of macroeconomic imbalances.

The security situation and the global slowdown cast a long shadow over the fragile economy. Economic woes were compounded by the power crisis, not of the government's making, but one it sought to partially – and controversially – address through the rental power projects.

In a setting of economic drift and political gloom the most memorable – and uplifting – moment of the year came with the cricket team's spectacular Twenty20 win. But even then there was no escape from a grim reality. Asked why the national team had been on such a long losing streak, ex-captain Yunus Khan succinctly summed up the national state of play: "How can cricket be stable in Pakistan, when nothing else is?"

Copyrights The News Newspaper 31-12-2009

Unverified SIMs Probe against cellphone firms likely

2010-01-05T01:50:00.000-08:00

KARACHI, Oct 31: As consumers find hundreds of thousands of subscriber identity modules (SIMs) wrongly registered in their names, realisation dawns on the relevant government body that the cellular phone companies evaded the previous campaign against dubious SIMs by blocking only those which were mostly dormant and provided little revenue.

Background interviews with senior officials of the cellular companies and an initial assessment of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior suggested that the government’s campaign, launched a few months ago, to streamline cellular subscribers’ data and block unverified connections resulted in blocking of only 13 million connections that were not generating returns for the five major operators.

The situation also set alarms bells ringing in the quarters concerned, where officials find it hard to believe that despite blocking of nearly 13 million connections, there are still thousands of subscribers with complaints regarding hundreds of thousands of unverified SIMs.

“We have come to know that there are still hundreds of thousands of connections issued on CNICs (computerized national identity cards) of persons who never acquired those,” said Senator Talha Mahmood, the chairman of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior, which in August 2008 had issued directives to the cellular companies to streamline their subscribers’ data and block connections which had unverified consumer documents.

“It seems that the companies on our directives blocked mainly those connections which were inactive or not in use. This is a serious issue, and we would definitely look into it in coming days,” he said in a brief response to a Dawn query.

All the five major companies – Mobilink, Ufone, Telenor, Zong and Warid – following the standing committee’s directives claimed to have blocked a total of 12.9 million SIMs earlier this year. However, the recentlylaunched ‘SIM information system – 668’ introduced by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority surprised a large number of cellular phone subscribes, who found hundreds of thousands of SIMs registered under their CNICs.

A statement issued by the PTA last week said 175,000 complainants visited the different customer service centres of the mobile operators for their SIM data correction after the launch of the service while more than half a million SIMs had been removed from the complainants’ CNICs after they provided undertakings. The number is expected to grow at a much faster pace as another PTA statement said nearly 600 to 700 customers were being entertained at each service centre daily.

The telecom regulators argue that the previous campaign, which blocked nearly 13 million SIMs, addressed the “unverified data” while the recent initiative marked those connections which were not being used by the actual customers.

However, telecom experts, subscribers and consumer rights bodies are not convinced by the PTA’s line of reasoning and they have unanimously criticised the cellular companies, which they said caused inconvenience to their customers for their own faults.

Similarly, high-ups in the local police say the blocking of nearly 13 million SIMs have not helped the investigators who, during the course of several cases, continue to find themselves powerless to locate criminals since details submitted to cellphone service providers usually prove false.

“In almost all cases of kidnapping, we checked hundreds of cellphone numbers and followed the personal details of the people in whose names these connections were registered,” said Sharfuddin Memon, the chairman of the CitizensPolice Liaison Committee.

“We did not find the criminals, and neither could we guess about their whereabouts since the personal details with the cellular phone companies referred to innocent people who had not applied for the connections under suspicion and who enjoyed a separate and legitimate service. The previous exercise seems eyewash.” As the law-enforcers have yet to see benefits of the 13 million blocked SIMs, the consumer rights body appears un able to understand the reason behind the inconvenience caused to consumers under the newly-launched ‘facility’ by the PTA for the faulty system of the cellular companies.

“It’s such a bad example being set by the cellular companies and surprisingly under the supervision of the regulator, which is also supposed to protect consumers’ rights,” said Shaheen Mahmood, a member of the Consumer Rights Council, an 11-member Sindh government body meant to guard consumer rights.

She said that at the time when the cellular companies should have been penalised for their irresponsible and non-professional business designs just to increase the subscriber base, the regulator had made consumers pay the price.

Copyrights by Dawn newspaper 01/11/2009

2010-01-05T01:24:00.000-08:00

Female tree

Amazing Facts

2010-01-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.

Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions!

What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

"Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.

In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child.

A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off!

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland!

Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!

The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London

Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people

Your Ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time you breathe!

The Elephant is the only mammal that can't jump!

One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different!

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!

The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.

Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."

Coca-Cola would be green if coloring weren’t added to it.

On average a hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute.

More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.

More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!

The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.

Earth is the only planet not named after a god.

It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.

You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.

Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food!

Dolphins sleep with one eye open!

It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open

The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds

Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not

Slugs have 4 noses.

Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.

A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!

The average person laughs 10 times a day!

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain

Seven wonder of world

2009-12-29T00:27:00.002-08:00

1. Kheops-Pyramid

The Great Pyramid of Giza (also called the Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt, and is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that survives substantially intact. It is believed the pyramid was built as a tomb for fourth dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek) and constructed over a 20 year period concluding around 2551 BC. The Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years. Originally the Great Pyramid was covered by casing stones that formed a smooth outer surface, but what is seen today is mainly only the underlying core structure, with a few of the original casing stones that once covered the structure simply representing the four compass points around the base. There have been varying scientific and alternative theories regarding the Great Pyramid's construction techniques. Most accepted construction theories are based on the idea that it was built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place.

There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. The lowest chamber is cut into the bedrock upon which the pyramid was built and was unfinished. The so-called^[1] Queen's Chamber and King's Chamber are higher up within the pyramid structure. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the main part of a complex setting of buildings that included two mortuary temples in honor of Khufu (one close to the pyramid and one near the Nile), three smaller pyramids for Khufu's wives, an even smaller "satellite" pyramid, a raised causeway connecting the two temples, and small mastaba tombs surrounding the pyramid for nobles.

Source: (Wikipedia)

2. Taj Mehal

The Taj Mahal (pronounced /tɑdʒ məˈhɑl/; Hindi: ताज महल; Persian/Urdu: تاج محل) is a mausoleum located in Agra, India, built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

The Taj Mahal (also "the Taj") is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements from Persian, Indian, and Islamic architectural styles.^[1]^[2] In 1983, the Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was cited as "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage."

While the white domed marble mausoleum is its most familiar component, the Taj Mahal is actually an integrated complex of structures. Building began around 1632 and was completed around 1653, and employed thousands of artisans and craftsmen.^[3] 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.^[4]^[5] Lahauri is generally considered to be the principal designer.^[6]

Source: (Wikipedia)

3. Chichen Itza Castillo

Chichen Itza (pronounced /tʃiːˈtʃɛn iːˈtsɑː/;^[1] from Yucatec Maya: Chi'ch'èen Ìitsha',^[2] "At the mouth of the well of the Itza") is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Yucatán state, present-day Mexico.

Chichen Itza was a major regional focal point in the northern Maya lowlands from the Late Classic through the Terminal Classic and into the early portion of the Early Postclassic period. The site exhibits a multitude of architectural styles, from what is called “Mexicanized” and reminiscent of styles seen in central Mexico to the Puuc style found among the Puuc Maya of the northern lowlands. The presence of central Mexican styles was once thought to have been representative of direct migration or even conquest from central Mexico, but most contemporary interpretations view the presence of these non-Maya styles more as the result of cultural diffusion.

The ruins of Chichen Itza are federal property, and the site’s stewardship is maintained by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History, INAH). The land under the monuments, however, is privately-owned by the Barbachano family.^[3]

Source:(Wikipedia)

4. Corcovado mountain

Corcovado, meaning "hunchback" in Portuguese, is a mountain in central Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 710-metre (2,329 ft) granite peak is located in the Tijuca Forest, a national park.

Corcovado hill lies just west of the city center but is wholly within the city limits and visible from great distances. It is known worldwide for the 38-meter (125 ft) statue of Jesus atop its peak, entitled Cristo Redentor or "Christ the Redeemer".

The peak and statue can be accessed via a narrow road or by the 3.8 kilometer (2.4 mi) Corcovado Rack Railway which was opened in 1884 and refurbished in 1980. The railway uses two-car electrically powered trains, with a passenger capacity of 360 passengers per hour. The rail trip takes approximately 20 minutes and departs every half hour. Due to its limited passenger capacity, the wait to board at the entry station can take several hours. The year-round schedule is 8:30 to 18:30.

From the train terminus and road, the observation deck at the foot of the statue is reached by 223 steps, or by elevators and escalators. Among the most popular year-round tourist attractions in Rio, the Corcovado railway, access roads, and statue platform are commonly crowded.

Source:(Wikipedia)

Corcovado

5. Colosseum in Rome Italy

The Colosseum or Roman Coliseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre (Latin: Amphitheatrum Flavium, Italian Anfiteatro Flavio or Colosseo), is an elliptical amphitheatre in the center of the city of Rome, Italy, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. It is one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and Roman engineering.

Occupying a site just east of the Roman Forum, its construction started between 70 and 72 AD^[1] under the emperor Vespasian and was completed in 80 AD under Titus,^[2] with further modifications being made during Domitian's reign (81–96).^[3] The name "Amphitheatrum Flavium" derives from both Vespasian's and Titus's family name (Flavius, from the gens Flavia).

Capable of seating 50,000 spectators,^[1]^[4]^[5] the Colosseum was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles. As well as the gladiatorial games, other public spectacles were held there, such as mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on Classical mythology. The building ceased to be used for entertainment in the early medieval era. It was later reused for such purposes as housing, workshops, quarters for a religious order, a fortress, a quarry, and a Christian shrine.

It has been estimated^[who?] that about 500,000 people and over a million wild animals died in the Colosseum games.^[6]^[7]

Although in the 21st century it stays partially ruined because of damage caused by devastating earthquakes and stone-robbers, the Colosseum is an iconic symbol of Imperial Rome and its breakthrough achievements in earthquake engineering. It is one of Rome's most popular tourist attractions and still has close connections with the Roman Catholic Church, as each Good Friday the Pope leads a torchlit "Way of the Cross" procession that starts in the area around the Colosseum.
Source:(Wikipedia)

6. Great Wall

The Great Wall of China (simplified Chinese: 长城; traditional Chinese: 長城; pinyin: Chángchéng; literally "long city/fortress") or (simplified Chinese: 万里长城; traditional Chinese: 萬里長城; pinyin: Wànlǐ Chángchéng; literally "The long wall of 10,000 Li (里)"^[1]) is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire during various successive dynasties. Since the 5th century BC, several walls have been built that were referred to as the Great Wall. One of the most famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains; the majority of the existing wall were built during the Ming Dynasty.

The Great Wall stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. The most comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has recently concluded that the entire Great Wall, with all of its branches, stretches for 8,851.8 km (5,500.3 mi). This is made up of 6,259.6 km (3,889.5 mi) of sections of actual wall, 359.7 km (223.5 mi) of trenches and 2,232.5 km (1,387.2 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
Source:(Wikipedia)

7. Petra Monastery

Petra (Greek "πέτρα" (petra), meaning rock; Arabic: البتراء, Al-Batrāʾ) is a historic and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is renowned for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Constructed around 100 BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans ^[1], it is now a symbol of Jordan as well as it's most visited tourism attraction^[2]. It lies on the slope of Mount Hor^[3] in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. Petra was chosen as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007 and also a World Heritage Site since 1985. Petra was also chosen by the BBC as one of "the 10 places you have to see before you die".^[4]

The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced to the West by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. It was famously described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a Newdigate Prize-winning sonnet by John William Burgon. UNESCO has described it as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage."

Source:(Wikipedia)