This guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Jahan has upped the anti for everyone in India. I got to go the Taj Majal yesterday. It really deserves to be a wonder of the world. (I found out just now that there really is no official "7 wonders of the world". The Taj Majal makes some of them, but not all -- it depends on who you ask. )
If you ask me, it's pretty fantastic. Shah Jahan built this giant mausoleum for his second wife Mumtaz Mahal, after she passed away giving birth to his 14TH! child. They had been married 18 years. He spent the next 22 building a place for her to be buried.
More than 200,000 artisans from countries around the world built the building. It has various features like:
Minarets at the four corners that are tilted out slightly. If there's an earthquake, the turrets will fall outward, and not harm the main building in the center.
Three acres of dirt excavated, then refilled, to start a reliable foundation for the tomb.
Deep wells dug down to bedrock, then refilled with stone, to build a solid platform for the tomb -- much the same way that skyscrapers are built today.
If you ask me, it's pretty fantastic. Shah Jahan built this giant mausoleum for his second wife Mumtaz Mahal, after she passed away giving birth to his 14TH! child. They had been married 18 years. He spent the next 22 building a place for her to be buried.
More than 200,000 artisans from countries around the world built the building. It has various features like:
Minarets at the four corners that are tilted out slightly. If there's an earthquake, the turrets will fall outward, and not harm the main building in the center.
Three acres of dirt excavated, then refilled, to start a reliable foundation for the tomb.
Deep wells dug down to bedrock, then refilled with stone, to build a solid platform for the tomb -- much the same way that skyscrapers are built today.
2 comments:
"The Joneses" ... nice.
In a survey about the Seven Wonders of the World...
"The other four leading candidates for the new list are the Incan mountaintop city Machu Picchu in Peru, the rose-red desert city of Petra in Jordan, Easter Island's mysterious statues and India's Taj Mahal."
For the rest of the article, see below:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2007-02-19T143044Z_01_L14876623_RTRUKOC_0_US-SWISS-WONDERS-1.xml&src=rss
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