The New 7 Wonders of the World

News Publications
Topic: RSS Feed

New 7 wonders of the world are named
Deseret News (Salt Lake City) , Jul 29, 2007 by Barry Hatton Associated Press


LISBON, Portugal -- Monuments in three Latin American countries were named among the
new seven wonders of the world.
Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer, Peru's Machu Picchu, and Mexico's Chichen Itza
pyramid were chosen along with the Great Wall of China, Jordan's Petra, the Colosseum in Rome and India's Taj Mahal.

The Great Pyramids of Giza, the only surviving structures from the original seven wonders of the ancient world, kept their status in addition to the new seven. The sites were selected according to a tally of around 100 million votes cast by people around the world over the Internet and by cell phone text messages, the nonprofit organization that conducted the poll said.

Landmarks that were nominated for the contest but that did not receive enough votes to
place them among the final seven were the Acropolis, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the stone statues on Chile's Easter Island, Australia's Sydney Opera House, Cambodia's Angkor, Spain's Alhambra, Turkey's Hagia Sophia, Japan's Kiyomizu Temple, Russia's Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral, Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle, Britain's Stonehenge and Mali's Timbuktu.

The new list of architectural marvels was announced during a show that included
appearances by American actress Hilary Swank, Indian actress Bipasha Basu and British
actor Ben Kingsley, as well as performances by Jennifer Lopez and Jose Carreras.
The campaign to pick the seven new wonders was begun in 1999 by Swiss adventurer
Bernard Weber. His Switzerland-based foundation, called New7Wonders, received almost
200 nominations from around the world. The list of candidates was narrowed down to 21
by early last year. Voting took place over the past six years but gathered pace only in recent months.

The organizers conceded there was no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more
than once for their favorite. They claimed votes came in from every country in the world.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, keeps
updating its own list of World Heritage Sites, which now totals 851 places. However, Paris-based UNESCO distanced itself from the seven wonders ballot, saying it
reflected only the opinion of those who voted.

Weber aims to encourage cultural diversity by supporting, preserving and restoring
monuments, and to inspire people to value their heritage. His foundation said it would use 50 percent of net revenue from the project to fund restoration efforts worldwide. One of them is a mission to rebuild the giant Bamiyan Buddha statue in Afghanistan, blown up in 2000 by the Taliban regime.

Weber said he was starting a new campaign Sunday to choose the new seven natural
wonders of the world. "If you want to save something, you first have to truly appreciate it," he told the crowd.

The original list of seven architectural marvels was collated by a variety of observers of the ancient Mediterranean and the Middle East. However, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria in Egypt have all vanished.

In addition to Egypt's Great Pyramids of Giza, the seven wonders of the world as decided
by a global contest are:

GREAT WALL OF CHINA
The 4,160-mile barricade running from east to west is the longest man-made structure in
the world. The fortification, which largely dates from the 7th through the 4th century B.C.,
was built to protect the various dynasties from invasion by the Huns, Mongols, Turks and
other nomadic tribes.

PETRA, JORDAN
The ancient city of Petra 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 their
caravan trade, and also continued to flourish under Roman rule after the Nabateans were
defeated in A.D. 106. The city is famous for its water tunnels and numerous stone
structures carved in the rock, the most impressive of which is probably Ad-Dayr, "the
Monastery," an uncompleted tomb facade that served as a church during Byzantine times.

STATUE OF CHRIST REDEEMER, BRAZIL
The 125-foot statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms overlooks Rio de
Janeiro on Brazil's Atlantic coast from atop Mt. Corcovado (the "Hunchback"). Created by
Polish-French sculptor Paul Landowski, the statue weighing more than 1,000 tons was built in pieces in France starting in 1926 and shipped to Brazil. The pieces were carried by
cogwheel railway up the 2,343-foot mountain for assembly. The statue was inaugurated on Oct. 12, 1931.

MACHU PICCHU, PERU
Built by the Incan Empire in the 15th century, the giant walls, palaces, temples and
dwellings of the Machu Picchu sanctuary are perched in the clouds at 8,000 feet above sea level on an Andean mountaintop overlooking a lush valley 310 miles southeast of Lima. It remains a mystery how the huge stones were moved into place for the construction of the remote city.

New 7 wonders of the world are named | Deseret News (Salt Lake Ci... http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070729/ai_n194...
1 of 3 4/19/2009 10:01 PM

This PDF is Created by Simpo PDF Creator unregistered version - http://www.simpopdf.com

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.

Albert Einstein