In Colorado, USA, there is still an active volcano. It last erupted about the same time as the pyramids were being built in Egypt.
100 Mind-Blowing Built Facts
The world’s largest grand piano was built by a 15-year-old in New Zealand. The piano is a little over 18 feet long and has 85 keys – 3 short of the standard 88.
The world’s first motel is in San Luis Obispo, which was built in 1925. When opened, it cost $1.25 for a two-room bungalow with a kitchen and a private adjoining garage.
Times Square was originally called Longacre Square until it was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly built Times Building.
One of the World Trade Centres was built to be 1,776 feet tall on purpose to reference the year the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The Leaning Tower of Piza is tilted because of the soft soil that it’s built on – which has also protected it from at least 4 powerful Earthquakes.
Soviet Russia needed lighthouses on their uninhabited Northern Coast, so they built automated lighthouses powered by small nuclear reactors.
Italy built an entire courthouse to prosecute the Mafia. They charged 474 members in a trial that lasted from 1986-1992. To date, it was the biggest trial in the world.
Cranes are built using cranes.
In feudal Japan, lords purposely built homes with squeaky floors as a defensive measure against ninjas.
Sound can be minus decibels. The quietest place on Earth is Microsoft’s anechoic chamber in Redmond, WA, USA, at -20.6 decibels. These anechoic chambers are built out of heavy concrete and brick and are mounted on springs to stop vibrations from getting in through the floor.
Hippos can’t swim. Hippos do have big bones, so big and dense that they’re barely buoyant at all. They don’t swim and instead perform a slow-motion gallop on the riverbed or the sea floor. Hippos can even sleep underwater, thanks to a built-in reflex that allows them to bob up, take a breath, and sink back down without waking.
You can see stars as they were 4,000 years ago with the naked eye. Without a telescope, all the stars we can see lie within about 4,000 light-years of us. That means at most you’re seeing stars as they were 4,000 years ago, around when the pyramids were being built in Egypt.
In the early 1900s, when Jewish people were banned from visiting beaches and certain hotels near New York City, they settled in New York’s Catskills Mountains and built a thriving resort region in what was dubbed “The Borscht Belt” or “Yiddish Alps.”
The building One Times Square was built in 1904 as the headquarters for the New York Times. It’s been home to the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop Celebration since 1907, when the first New Year’s Eve ball was made of iron and wood, one hundred 25-watt bulbs and weighed 700 pounds. Today’s ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs almost six tons with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles bolted to 672 LED modules attached to the aluminium frame.
In 1871, Potter Palmer, a Chicago businessman, built Palmer House, a Hilton Hotel, for a wedding gift for his wife, Bertha, who in 1893 asked the hotel’s pastry chef to make a chocolate cake-like treat that would be easy to transport for the World’s Columbian Exposition. The result of this request was the Palmer House Brownie, made of thick chocolate and topped with a walnut and apricot glaze and later published in a Sears Roebuck Catalog in 1898.
Roller coasters were invented to distract Americans from sin. In the 1880s, hosiery businessman LaMarcus Thompson hated that Americans were tempted by hedonistic places like saloons and brothels. So he set out to straighten up one of the most immoral places he could think of: Coney Island in New York. There, he built America’s first roller coaster to give New Yorkers some good, clean fun—away from seedier pastimes.
There’s only one Shell gas station shaped like a shell. Eight were built in the 1930s, but the only one left is in North Carolina.
There’s only one Shell garage shaped like a Shell. There were eight built in the 1930s, but only one remains in North Carolina.
Squeaky floors were the best home security in 17th-century Japan. You’d expect Japanese feudal lords to live in pristine houses with the sturdiest materials – and that is mostly true, save for their squeaky, creaky floors. Nightingale floors were flooring systems that “chirped” when somebody walked on it. They were installed in temples and palaces to alert of intruders. The floors were built in a way that the flooring nails rub against jackets or clamps, causing squeaking noises.
Dodge made the first engines used by Ford. The Dodge Brothers Company built every part of the earliest Ford car except the seats and tyres.
The tallest tower of cupcakes ever made is over 35 feet. On Sep 23, 2017, Cupcakes of Hope (ZAF) built a tower of cupcakes standing 35 ft 4” (10.77 m) tall in Vereeniging, South Africa.
The Netherlands has a squirrel bridge. One of the most interesting fun facts about humans’ relationship with animals: After a few squirrel casualties, Netherlands officials built a squirrel bridge across the N44 motorway. The two-year project cost a hefty £120,000. However, to date, only five squirrels have been seen using it.
NASCAR drivers lose weight while racing. Because of the high temperatures during a race, the average driver can lose up to 10 pounds worth of weight by sweating. A racecar regularly reaches temperatures of 170 degrees despite the built-in ventilation.
The largest grand piano in the world was built by a teenager. The piano is over 18 feet long and has 85 keys. This is 3 keys short of the standard 88. This grand piano can be found in New Zealand.
It did not take more than $1M to build Mt. Rushmore. The construction of this famous monument, Mount Rushmore, took over 14 years to complete. Over 400 workers built this monument from the group-up from 1927 to 1941.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is tilted due to the soil at its base. The soft soil it is built on is also the reason why it was able to survive 4 major Earthquakes. This tower took over 344 years to build and was completed in 1178.
A mouse trap built 155 years ago caught a mouse in 2016. One of the earliest concepts for mousetraps managed to capture a wild rodent in 2016. Its inventor, Colin Pullinger claimed that his device would last a lifetime.
Birds can recognise landmarks. Birds are built with their kind of GPS that allows them to navigate easily during migration. A young bird will imprint on the sun and stars that allow it to attain familiarity with its location.
There is a bridge made especially for squirrels. This was built to give the small creatures a safe pathway to use to cross the N44 motorway. Officials from the Netherlands spent approximately 120,000 pounds on this project. Only five squirrels were able to use this bridge.
Roosters have built-in earplugs in them. Research has found that when a rooster opens its beak to crow, its external auditory canals close off. This prevents the sound from coming in and acts as an earplug for them. A rooster’s crow is usually around 140 decibels and higher.
Cat jaws cannot be moved sideways. They are mainly built for killing prey and can open very wide to ensure their kill. Cats also cannot easily chew their food.
The Great Wall of China was built with rice. One of the most unexpected interesting facts: For the Ming dynasty sections of the Great Wall, the bricks were held together by a mixture of sticky rice flour and slaked lime.
The tallest LEGO tower of all time is 112 feet high. On August 20th, 2013, a group of students from Delaware, USA built the tallest Lego tower in the world. The tower stood at 112 feet tall and was built using over 500,000 pieces of Lego.
She has a close bond with her co-stars. Peyton List has built strong connections with her fellow actors and considers them not just colleagues but also lifelong friends.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
Nobody knows who built the Taj Mahal. The names of the architects, masons, and designers that have come down to us have all proved to be latter-day inventions, and there is no evidence to indicate who the real creators were.
There’s a Shell garage that’s shaped like a Shell. In the 1930s, Shell built a series of shell-shaped service stations, but only one remains today, in North Carolina.
British military tanks were designed in a way so that they could make tea. If the military crew need any hot boiling water, there’s a built-in boiling vessel to make coffee or tea.
The most expensive new car ever sold went for $13 million. This custom-built Rolls-Royce is one of a kind. However, the most expensive car ever purchased is a 1963 Ferrari GTO that recently sold for $70 million.
The Woolly Mammoth was around when the Egyptian Pyramids were being built.
Roosters have built-in earplugs, so they don’t deafen themselves when they crow. Anyone who’s ever spent a night outside the city knows one thing, and that’s the fact that roosters are loud! Researchers measured how loud roosters do crow and found them to be as loud as 140 decibels – well over the amount needed to cause permanent ear damage and even deafness. When they studied what happens when roosters crow, they discovered that in opening their jaw to crow, their outer ear canals close up, essentially giving them natural earplugs.
The First Computer Mouse. Colleagues at SRI Built The First Computer Mouse. Douglas Engelbart began the development of the computer mouse in the early 1960s. Bill English, a colleague of Engelbart at SRI, built the original prototype in 1964. By 1967, Engelbart filed a patent for the mouse, which was issued in 1970. SRI licensed the technology to other companies, but the computer mouse didn’t reach widespread commercial production until 1984. The original mouse relied on one or two wheels to record motion and a single button for clicking.
IBM 305 RAMAC: The Supercomputer That Weighed A Ton (Literally). In September 1956, IBM announced and released the IBM 305 RAMAC supercomputer. It was the first supercomputer to use magnetic disk storage. More than 1,000 systems were built and sold before the 305 RAMAC became obsolete in 1962. The machine weighed more than a ton and required multiple people to set up or move. IBM charged companies and organisations $3,200 per month for the IBM 305. That amounts to nearly $30,000 in today’s dollars. For that reason, government organisations and large corporations were the main customers of IBM’s supercomputer. Subsequent supercomputers were released by IBM. The company releases a new supercomputer every few years on average.
Mammoth constructions. When Egypt’s major pyramids were being built, there remained a small population of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island in the Arctic.
World’s first skyscraper. The story of skyscrapers often begins in New York and Chicago from around 1884 with increasingly tall buildings. However, what is technically the world’s first skyscraper was built in Shropshire in 1796–7. Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings may not look like a skyscraper, but its Main Mill was the first building in the world to have an iron frame supporting the weight of the structure, the formula for every skyscraper ever built so that it has been dubbed the ‘Grandparent of Skyscrapers’.
A city for cars? LA is so sprawling thanks to trains, not cars. A century ago it was served by the largest electric railway ever built: the ‘Red Car’ system.
Largest palace ever built. In 200 BC, Emperor Gaozu of Han requested the building of the Weiyang Palace complex north of modern Xi’an. Weiyang Palace has a claim to being the largest palace ever built on Earth: it covered 4.8 km2 (1,200 acres), which is nearly seven times the size of the current Forbidden City in Beijing or eleven times the size of the Vatican City, though little remains today.
An innovative clock was built in China in 1090. A man named Su Song created a water-powered clock tower that measured time and tracked the movements of the planets and stars in the night sky. Su Song built a giant water wheel within the clock tower. Buckets attached to the wheel would fill with water and then tip once full, causing the wheel to rotate, demarcating time.
Did you know that Android is built on top of the Linux Kernel? Even if it is heavily modified, Android functions because Linux exists.
England is very close to Europe’s mainland: The Channel Tunnel, also playfully known as the ‘Chunnel’, connects Folkestone to Calais. The tunnel offers easy access between England and France and stretches over 31.5 miles. The tunnel was built in 1993, with the Eurostar’s handy services beginning in 1994. It’s the longest undersea tunnel in the world, with 23.5 miles of tunnel stretching 75 metres below the surface of the English Channel. Thanks to the Chunnel, you can get to Paris from London in just over two and a half hours!
Stonehenge is older than the Pyramids: Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments, built as a cemetery in the Bronze Age, but not many people know that this is even older than the pyramids. The first stones were an early henge monument, built 3000 years BC and the exceptional stone circle was constructed in the late Neolithic period about 2500 BC. The pyramids were built and finished around 2500-2400 BC. We can conclude that both monuments are very old and worth a visit!
It’s rumoured that Buckingham Palace was built on the site of a former gay brothel.
The world’s first subway system was built in London, UK.
In Gravesend, England, there is a strategically built fake town used by police to imitate dangerous situations and formulate defence mechanisms against them.