TigerHawk

There is a contest to determine the "new" Seven Wonders of the World, and you can vote online at www.new7wonders.com. The list of nominated "wonders" is impressive, but one can't help but get the feeling that the organization behind the list took into consideration the feelings of various self-important countries, regional balance, and a certain snobbery. Which of the following putative wonders seem slightly out of place? Also, globe-trotters among you should nominate your leading omitted "wonders" in the comments (mine is below the list).

ACROPOLIS, GREECE: A million people come here each year to see the marble temples - including the ruins of the columned Parthenon - and statues of Greek gods and goddesses dating from the fifth century B.C.

ALHAMBRA, SPAIN: The palace and citadel, perched above Granada, was the residence of the Moorish caliphs who governed southern Spain in splendor until 1492, when the city was conquered by the Christian forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, ending 800 years of Muslim rule. Stunning features include mosaics, arabesques and mocarabe, or honeycomb work.

ANGKOR, CAMBODIA: The archaeological site in Siem Reap was the capital of the Khmer (Cambodian) empire from the ninth to 15th centuries. It served as administrative center and place of worship for a prosperous kingdom that stretched from Vietnam to China and the Bay of Bengal. The 12th century ruins include Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.

CHRIST REDEEMER STATUE, BRAZIL: The 125-foot statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms overlooks Rio de Janeiro from atop Mount Corcovado. The statue was built in pieces in France starting in 1926, and shipped to Brazil. A railway carried it up the 2,343-foot mountain for the 1931 inauguration. [Exclusive TigerHawk photograph here. - ed.]

COLOSSEUM, ITALY: The 50,000-seat amphitheater in Rome was inaugurated in A.D. 80. Thousands of gladiators dueled to the death here, and Christians were fed to the lions. The arena has influenced the design of modern stadiums.

EASTER ISLAND, CHILE: Hundreds of massive stone busts, or Moais, are all that remains from the prehistoric Rapanui culture that crafted them between 400 and 1,000 years ago to represent deceased ancestors. Some statues are over 70 feet tall. They gaze out on the south Pacific Ocean more than 1,000 miles off the Chilean mainland.

EIFFEL TOWER, FRANCE: The 985-foot tower, built in 1889 for the International Exposition, symbolizes Paris. Made almost entirely of open-lattice wrought iron and erected in only two years with a small labor force, the tower — Paris' tallest structure — demonstrated advances in construction techniques, but some initially criticized it as unaesthetic.

GREAT WALL OF CHINA: The 4,160-mile barricade running from east to west is the world's longest man-made structure. The fortification was built to protect various dynasties from invasion by Huns, Mongols, Turks and other nomadic tribes. Construction took place over hundreds of years, beginning in the seventh century B.C. [To quibble, the Trans-Siberian railroad is longer. - ed.]

HAGIA SOPHIA, TURKEY: The soaring cathedral, also called the Church of Holy Wisdom, was built in 537 B.C. at Constantinople, today's Istanbul. In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, it became a mosque with minarets. When Turkish President Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum in 1935, Christian mosaics covered up by the Muslims were revealed.

KIYOMIZU TEMPLE, JAPAN: Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera, which means Clear Water Temple, was founded by a Buddhist sect in 798 and rebuilt in 1633 after a fire. Drinking from its three-stream waterfall is believed to confer health, longevity and success.

KREMLIN AND ST. BASIL'S CATHEDRAL, RUSSIA: Onion domes with golden cupolas surrounded by red brick walls are at the heart of Moscow's Kremlin, a Medieval fortress converted into the center of Russian government. The Kremlin once symbolized Soviet communism. The Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed on adjacent Red Square features nine towers of different colors. It was built by Czar Ivan the Terrible in the mid-16th century.

MACHU PICCHU, PERU: Built by the Incan Empire in the 15th century, Machu Picchu's walls, palaces, temples and dwellings are perched in the clouds at 8,000 feet above sea level in the Andes overlooking a lush valley 310 miles from Lima.

NEUSCHWANSTEIN CASTLE, GERMANY: The inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, Neuschwanstein is a creation of "Mad King" Ludwig II of Bavaria, who had it built in the 19th century to indulge his romantic fancies. Perched on a peak in the Bavarian Alps, the gray granite castle rises to towers, turrets and pinnacles and contains many paintings with scenes from Richard Wagner operas admired by Ludwig.

PETRA, JORDAN: This ancient city in southwestern Jordan, built on a terrace around the Wadi Musa or Valley of Moses, was the capital of the Arab kingdom of the Nabateans, a center of caravan trade, and continued to flourish under Roman rule after the Nabateans' defeat in A.D. 106. The city is famous for water tunnels and stone structures carved in the rock, including Ad-Dayr, "the Monastery," an uncompleted tomb facade that served as a church during Byzantine times.

PYRAMID AT CHICHEN ITZA, MEXICO: This step pyramid surmounted by a temple was part of a sacred site in an important Mayan center on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. It is built according to the solar calendar. Shadows at the fall and spring equinoxes are said to look like a snake crawling down the steps, similar to the carved serpent at the top. An older pyramid inside features a jade-studded, red jaguar throne.

PYRAMIDS OF GIZA, EGYPT: The only surviving structures of the original seven wonders, the three pyramids were built as tombs for pharaohs 4,500 years ago. Nearby is the Great Sphinx statue, with a man's face and a lion's body.

STATUE OF LIBERTY, NEW YORK: The 305-foot statue in New York Harbor has welcomed immigrants and symbolized freedom since 1886, when it was dedicated as a gift of the French government.

STONEHENGE, BRITAIN: How and why this circular monument of massive rocks was created between 3,000 and 1,600 B.C. is unknown, but some experts say the stones were aligned as part of a sun-worshipping culture or astronomical calendar. Today it is a major tourist attraction. Druids and New Age followers gather here every June 21 to celebrate summer solstice.

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, AUSTRALIA: Situated on Bennelong Point reaching into Sydney's harbor, the opera house was designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon and opened in 1973 by Queen Elizabeth II. Its roof resembles a ship in full sail and is covered by over 1 million white tiles. The building has 1,000 rooms.

TAJ MAHAL, INDIA: The white marble-domed mausoleum in Agra was built by a 17th century Mogul emperor for his favorite wife, who died in childbirth. The architecture combines Indian, Persian, and Islamic styles. The complex houses the graves of the emperor, his wife, and other royalty.

TIMBUKTU, MALI: Two of West Africa's oldest mosques, the Djingareyber, or Great Mosque, and the Sankore mosque built during the 14th and early 15th centuries can still be seen here in the northern Sahara Desert. Founded about A.D. 1,100, Timbuktu was a flourishing caravan center in the Arabic world and a leading spiritual and intellectual center in the 15th and 16th centuries, with one of the world's first universities.

Whatever the merits of some of the more contemporary "wonders" included on the list, I don't see how you fail to nominate the pagodas at Pagan, Burma. More than 700 pagodas and ruins thereof stretch across a plain on the banks of the Irrawady River, and the view from the top of any one of them is spectacular. (The picture above is off a Google Images search.)

I suspect that the nominators supposed they had only one Southeast Asian "slot," and they gave it to Angkor. I am sure Angkor is also amazing. I do know, however, that Pagan is far more impressive than any number of the other putative wonders of the world. Of the several that I have seen personally, only the Great Wall rivals Pagan's breathtaking majesty.

In addition, there is the question of the "Roman" nominee. As cool as the Colosseum is, how do you decide against St. Peter's Basilica? Did St. Peter's fail to make the cut out of fairness to the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which presumably did not qualify because (a) Mecca is off-limits to non-Muslims, so most tourists wouldn't be able to "bag" all seven of the new "wonders" if the Grand Mosque won, and (b) people might be upset when they learned that it was built by the Bin Laden Group?

And, finally, there is the glaring omission of Las Vegas, which includes the Strip (a wonder that includes pretty impressive facsimiles of several of the nominated "wonders")...

(Click to enlarge - credit TigerHawk)

...and the Hoover Dam...

(ditto)

Most people -- including even Europeans and other educated people -- who visit Las Vegas cannot believe the scale of the extraordinary resorts along the Strip, which contains several of the very largest hotels in the world. The Hoover Dam is one of the world's great engineering triumphs. The dam includes more concrete than was necessary to build Interstate 80 from San Francisco to the George Washington Bridge, and the pouring of it required new techniques that had never been attempted:

The first concrete was placed into the dam on June 6, 1933. Since no structure the magnitude of Hoover Dam had ever been constructed, many of the procedures used in construction of the dam were untried. One of the problems that faced the designers was cooling and contraction of the concrete in the dam. Rather than being a single block of concrete, the dam was built as a series of interlocking trapezoidal columns in order to allow the tremendous heat produced by the curing concrete to dissipate. The Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would have gotten so hot that it would have taken 125 years for the concrete to cool to ambient temperatures. The resulting stresses would have caused the dam to crack and crumble away. It was not enough to place small quantities of concrete in individual columns. In order to speed up the concrete cooling so that the next layer could be poured, each form also contained cooling coils of 1 inch (25.4 mm) thin-walled steel pipe. When the concrete was first poured, river water was circulated through these pipes. Once the concrete had received a first initial cooling, chilled water from a refrigeration plant on the lower cofferdam was circulated through the coils to finish the cooling. As each block was cooled, the pipes of the cooling coils were cut off and pressure grouted by pneumatic grout guns.

Unprecedented engineering notwithstanding, I'm not sure it should surprise us that the wonders of Nevada were not high on the list of "New 7 Wonders" panel of experts, led as it is by the former Director-General of UNESCO. Indeed, one wonders whether any genuinely American entry had a chance to make the cut. The Statue of Liberty, after all, was designed and built in France.