How 15+ World Wonders Are Not What They Seem

let's play a little guessing game I'm going to name the sites you have on your bucket list Machu Picchu the Coliseum Petra Taj Mahal did I get at least one of them right confess I was just taking them off the list of the new Seven Wonders of the World it was officially finished in 2007 after a worldwide vote what happened to the old list well it was put together in the second century BCE and there is just one site currently Still Standing the Pyramids of Giza pack your bags we're going to Peru the home of the mighty Machu Picchu when it was first discovered in 1911 its Explorer thought he had managed to find the lost city of the Inca several decades later it turned out it wasn't the same city plus there were still three farmer families living there so it couldn't be really called Lost and forgotten no wonder they like it so much there the stones making up the buildings are cut so precisely and sit together so tightly that you can't even insert a credit card between them it has saved the city from some serious earthquakes which are common here the buildings Just Dance through all the shaking and then go back into place and because of the way it's arranged you can see the sun rise or set exactly behind the important Peaks on important days for the Inca more than half sixty percent of all the construction in Machu Picchu was done underground so you can't even see it the best part is that there are still things to be discovered if you want to get your name Inked in history our next stop is on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico the mighty Chichen Itza sits here for well over 1 500 years the structure has exactly 365 steps you can count when you go next time if you don't trust me the Maya who built the whole thing were really into astronomy so it's not surprising they made as many steps as there are days in a year also if you happen to be here during the spring or fall equinox you'll notice the Shadows the Setting Sun casts make it look like there's a snake going down the stairs The Feathered Serpent was one of the main deities in ancient Mexico Chichen Itza used to be a busy urban center it had its ups and downs and by the time the Spanish arrived the 16th century it had been mostly abandoned the first photos we have from the spot are from the end of the 19th century looks like the terrorist pyramid had a lot more vegetation on it back in 1892 the only source of fresh water in this dry climate is the cenotes or water-filled sinkholes there are four visible synonyms and the temple pyramid most likely stands on top of one more archaeologists are looking for tunnels to enter it see our next wonder you must be prepared to share it with around fifteen thousand others that's how many people visit the statue of Christ the Redeemer every day the statue sits above the corcovado mountain and weighs roughly 635 tons must have been tricky to lift it all the way up there actually it came in parts sculptor Paul landowski made several pieces of the future sculpture out of clay The Head and the hands were made in full size and the body would be made larger on the spot the parts of the statue were cut into cubes and then cast into concrete and put together workers prepared the cement right on the spot and transferred all the tools by a small cogwheel railroad which tourists used to get up the hill the statue is the best proof that lightning does strike in the same place more than once it must be because of its position on top of the mountain its fingers head and eyebrows got damaged by storms time to move on this time we're going to Agra India yep to see the Taj Mahal that beautiful pink construction wait wasn't it always white well the Taj Mahal changes its color depending on what time it is it looks pale pink or pearly gray at Sunrise Crystal white at noon and the sunset paints at Orange bronze in the evening it may even seem translucent blue and that's not the only optical illusion here when you move towards the main gate the building seems gigantic but the closer you get to it the smaller it looks the minarets or Towers on both sides might seem to be standing perfectly straight but in reality they're leaning outward it it's done for aesthetic balance and also to prevent the towers from falling on the main building in case of an earthquake for construction finished in the 17th century the Taj Mahal looks good as new that's because it regularly gets a spa day they apply a proper facial mud pack to it which is a traditional recipe to keep the radiance I'm feeling peckish from all the traveling how about we go to Italy and have some pasta just kidding the real reason would be to see the Coliseum of course its original name was the flavian amphitheater because it was built by the flavian dynasty the new name is most likely after the Colossal bronze statue of Emperor Nero that was once next to the building the model for the statue was the Colossus of Rhodes in its nearly two thousand years the Coliseum has lived through at least three major fires and four earthquakes it was damaged repaired and rebuilt many times the impressive construction once hosted up to 80 000 Spectators what they watched wasn't necessarily as cruel as Hollywood made us believe most Gladiator matches went under strict rules sometimes the public would get bored with the show and the participants would draw out of the Arena once the Coliseum stops serving as an arena for those scary shows it was used as a cemetery a place of worship for housing workshops for Artisans and Merchants the home of a religious order and a fortified Castle now it's open to the public and you can check out its underground Labyrinth be for the next Wonder it's the Lost City of Petra or rather the rediscovered city which was once super rich and vibrant then got abandoned and found again in 1812. the whole city is made of sandstone and even though it's in the desert it has seen some pretty heavy rains still it has lasted two thousand years thanks to some very skilled workers modern laser scanning showed that they put giant steps into the mountain to check the quality of the Rock and carve out the buildings without risking their lives and how did people survive here in the desert without any water the nabataeans who lived here developed a whole complicated system of conduits dams and cisterns to make sure they have enough vital fluid for the whole year in case you're in your Indiana Jones mode there's still a lot to discover here in Petra archaeologists believe we only know 15 percent of the City by now and the rest is still hidden underground let's finish our tour with the largest human-made project in the world yep I'm talking about the Great Wall of China it stretches for over 13 000 miles from the bohi sea in the East all the way to the Gobi desert in the West but don't trust the popular myth you won't really see the wall from the Moon it took over 2 000 years to finish and a good amount of building materials mostly bricks and cut stone blocks have you ever scratched your name on a tree or even worse some famous place no worries I won't tell anyone people who built the wall do the same some of the bricks which are mostly from the Ming Dynasty have some data like production location brick household name and the responsible officials this was a form of quality control if something happened to any of the bricks it would be easy to find out who to blame for it the majority of us have believed for a really long time that Stonehenge one of the most iconic monuments in the world was an ancient calendar because of its alignment with the summer and winter solstices but no one could figure out how it really worked now a team of researchers have come up with another study it turns out that Stonehenge could have functioned like the solar calendar it's a similar principle to the solar calendar ancient Egyptians used to have the one based on a year composed of 365.25 days each of the stones from this big mysterious source and circle represented one day within a month sarsons are what we call these large boulders it's actually a perpetual calendar where people could track every winter solstice Sunset that way those who live near Stonehenge which is today Wiltshire UK could keep track of the days and months of the year we all Now understand this mysterious calendar system because of this interesting Discovery in 2020 the team has identified the source of 50 of the 52 sarsons that make up the iconic Stone Circle we all know about they analyze the chemical composition of these sarcens and Trace their Origins to the Westwoods in Wiltshire which is about 15 miles away from the monument not only did these 50 sarsons come from the same Source but they were also placed in their current position at approximately the same time they make the Outer Circle of Stonehenge together with a horseshoe-shaped inner ring near the center of the monument there are smaller rocks known as blue stones the team traced the origins of the blue stones all the way to Wales they also discovered that the sarsons share a common chemistry over 99 silica with Trace elements two sarsons were different from each other and also different from the main cluster these sarsons were arranged in three different formations at Stonehenge 30 of them formed this huge Stone Circle that dominates the monument four station Stones ended up in a rectangular formation outside the circle while the rest located inside the Stone Circle were constructed into five trilathons a trillathon is when you have two vertical stones with a horizontal lintel at the top thirty five and four are pretty interesting numbers in the context of this calendar system the 30 uprights that are spread around the main sarson ring could represent days of the month if you multiply that by 12 you get 360. add on five more those from the Central trilothons and the result is 365 and to really adjust the calendar to match a solar year you need to add one extra leap day for every four years right the team believes that ancient people use the four station stones to keep track of this part so in this system they paired the summer and winter solstice every year with the same pair of stones ancient people started building Stonehenge about five thousand years ago and it took more than one thousand years to finish the work but the Stonehenge you see today is not the complete original version from the beginning people have broken and taken away many of its old bluestones and sarsons the entire structure also changed over time since there were generations and generations 180 of them to be precise that passed since the beginning of Stonehenge who would participate in the building and rebuilding of it people created Stonehenge in four stages they first built a circular enclosure that stretched over 330 feet 100 meters in diameter and went around 56 pits a high Bank flanks the ditch of the enclosure while there's a low Bank on the outside some theories even say that this part was some form of a communal Cemetery later in the second stage Builders added a horseshoe of sarsentrilathons in the third stage they constructed a ceremonial Avenue that was nearly two miles long it possibly traced the path of the blue stones people moved from the Aubry holes to the Q and R holes a double Arc that these blue stones have been arranged into at this stage Builders also reorganized the entrance stones and recut the main enclosure ditch during the fourth stage the stones were broken and Builders etched carvings into the sarsons later the blue stones ended up being modified again Builders didn't leave any written records about how they managed to drag these heavy stones to the site and get them to stand so perfectly upright but there are theories that say their techniques were more closely associated with woodwork than Masonry they made mortise holes and protruding tenons because they wanted to slot these Stones together and they used tongue and groove joints to do that when they dug the hole for the stones they placed Timber poles at the back of the holes that were used as brace support then they moved the stone into a position and hauled it upward with ropes they packed Rubble into the hole to make sure the stones stayed in place a pre-industrial farming Society put this fascinating Monument together using only tools made of stone and Bone not even the wheel had been invented yet this unusual formation is also known as ringing rocks the stones you can see at Stonehenge have some pretty odd acoustic properties when you strike them they produce a loud clanging sound that could be one of the reasons why people bothered to transport them over such a long distance in the first place in some ancient cultures people believe that these rocks contained healing powers it's a really popular location that attracts over a million visitors a year when it first opened to the public visitors were allowed to walk among the stones they could even climb on them as they weren't any restrictions until the 19th century visitors would regularly chip off pieces of the rock to take them home as souvenirs they would also engrave their initials into the stones they camped within the circle and dug fire pits not realizing that the digging pits could seriously undermine the stability of the entire Monument over time visitors have encountered more and more restrictions until the monument was finally roped off in 1997 because of the serious erosion of the stones that means if you want to visit you can only view it from a distance unless you want to pay extra for the Stone Circle experience which can be arranged outside of normal visiting hours Stonehenge originally had two entrances that led into the enclosure there was a wide one to the Northeast and one that was a bit smaller and located on the southern side if you look at it today you can see there are many more gaps this is mostly because of tracks made later that once crossed the monument the ground within Stonehenge has been severely Disturbed and it wasn't just about random visitors digging fire pits there was a group of people who dug a large deep hole within the stone circle in the 17th century because they were looking for Treasure then there was Charles Darwin who also did some digging because he was studying earthworms in the area he wanted to know how these worms could impact objects in the soil over time he observed how a fallen Stone there had sunk deeper into the ground and realized it was happening because of the activities of these tiny creatures who churned through the soil all the time in 1963 there was a theory that Stonehenge had been built as some sort of computer that predicts solar and lunar eclipses later some proposed it was actually constructed as a monument to ancestors that had passed away this Theory says the permanence of its Stones represented the Eternal afterlife the average sarson you can find there weighs 25 tons while the biggest one weighs around 30 tons if you want to get an idea of how massive these Stones really are you can go behind the visitor center in the outdoor gallery to check out a replica sarson Stone it's a true copy of a freestanding upright from one of the trilathons that are located in the inner horseshoe of the monument there are five Neolithic houses at Stonehenge based on real archaeological evidence of houses found in that area each of them had stake-built walls and a chalk floor some even had furniture there was also a lot of trash discovered which means people in this area used to like celebrations and feasting research has shown that people lived in these houses for 50 to 100 Years Around 4 500 years BCE which was the time when the builders brought the sarson stones to Stonehenge during the time they were building Stonehenge generations of people went through major changes themselves from the Stone Age to the early Bronze Age they were no longer as static and isolated they started to travel and trade more which means they communicated way more than their ancestors even internationally this is how they could have spread the word about Stonehenge and it's also when the whole mystery and fascination with the monument began [Music] tourists visit them daily scrambling for the perfect selfie with some of the world's best known attractions but I'm sure you're unaware of these little secrets some of these places are hiding I promise that today you will look at these world famous monuments in a new way did you know that the Statue of Liberty has a second name the Liberty enlightening the world and what's hidden in a box under the statue right here this massive structure stands watch over the entrance to New York Harbor welcoming travelers from around the world and there's a lot about this beautiful lady that may surprise you designed by sculptor Frederick Bartoli France gifted it to the United States in 1884. that's a pretty nice present but there was a catch already built and much too big to move it was dismantled entirely packed into 200 crates and shipped across the ocean then workers put it back together in New York like a giant 3D puzzle and though many assume the statue is made of stone it is not the outside is actually thin sheets of metal originally Bartoli wanted these sheets to be made of pure gold creating a truly impressive site but at 305 feet tall the expense was too great he opted for copper a cheaper material instead the one drawback copper turns green over time when the metal comes in contact with oxygen it results in a chemical reaction called oxidation the Statue of Liberty was originally the color of a shiny new Penny not as impressive as gold but pretty spectacular for 25 years it changed to a darker brown then slowly faded to the light green it is today because the statue is hollow you can actually go inside and walk up to her head I hope you've been working out though you have to climb 354 stairs to make it to the crown though initially open to visitors the torch is now out of bounds it was damaged in 1916 and has remained closed ever since maybe avoid visiting when the weather is bad in heavy winds the Statue of Liberty sways up to three inches while the torch can move as much as 5 inches I would turn as green as the statue itself oh and it's hit by nearly 600 bolts of lightning every year shocking I know there's also a secret box tucked away beneath the statue it contains a copy of the U.S Constitution 20 bronze medals and a portrait of the statue's designer another well-known monuments takes us over the Atlantic Ocean to Paris France it's the Eiffel Tower and though appreciated now did you know it was once so disliked it almost never got built or that the engineer added a special floor just for himself when the tower went up engineer Gustav Eiffel built it for the 1889 World's Fair at 1083 feet tall it's the same height as an 81 story building once finished it was the tallest human-made structure in the world and remained the tallest for 41 years until the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York City before being built the public received a sneak peek of the designs people were not impressed they called it everything from a truly tragic Street Lamp to a belfry skeleton and residents along with the shop de Mars where the tower was going to be built actually went to court to block its construction but authorities sided with Eiffel and the tower was finally built Gustav asked the designer of the tower Maurice coachlin to include an apartment at the very top for his private use it offered a 360 degree view of Paris and had a living room big enough for a table a couch and a piano a kitchen a bathroom and a bedroom talk about a luxury Penthouse in the sky let's take a quick hop over to London next to check out the Big Ben but which part of the structure does the name actually refer to you might be surprised Big Ben is actually the name of the Bell not the tower that's right you're more likely to hear Big Ben than see it it's located in the clock tower which was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 and the only visitors allowed to enter Elizabeth Tower and see Big Ben are residents of the United Kingdom everyone else can only admire it from afar pity the Bell weighs 16 tons the same as four and a half hippos and is seven feet tall not far from here is the impressive London Eye Europe's biggest wheel at 443 feet tall less than 30 years old it still has its secrets in this case they involve the number 13. A Little Romance and tortoises [Music] there are 32 climate-controlled observation capsules on the Giant Wheel but they numbered them from 1 to 33. what the reason is simple designers skipped the number 13 because of its association with bad luck next time you take an elevator you'll notice there's no 13th floor in most buildings for the same superstitious reason the 32 capsules represent the 32 Burrows or areas of London and it is a top-rated tourist destination receiving more visitors than the Taj Mahal or a Stonehenge and who knew a giant wheel could be romantic at least five thousand marriage proposals and over 500 weddings have taken place here not a fan of scary rides you got nothing to worry about the London Eye moves at a very slow 10 inches per second which is twice as fast as a tortoise moving at top speed the ride doesn't even stop to let people on and off back to the United States for this next famous monument the Hollywood Sign did you know that it used to be bigger or the reason it was built in the first place don't worry I'm about to share all its secrets developers sh Woodruff and Tracy e Schultz built the original sign in 1923 creating it to advertise real estate the two men wanted to establish a new neighborhood called hollywoodland and the now iconic sign was simply meant to be a giant advertisement to draw home buyers to the area they plan to remove it after 18 months in fact the original sign spelled out Hollywood land the city dropped the last four letters in 1949. and now you can only appreciate it from a distance tourists are not allowed anywhere near the actual sign standing in your way razor wire motion sensors infrared technology and alarms there are even helicopter patrols yikes let's head north to Canada next to the city of Toronto when you search along at Skyline you'll see its most famous landmark the impressive CN Tower at 1815 feet tall it's pretty hard to miss but what treasure does it hide in a special time capsule tucked away in its walls it took a whole year for 1500 workers to build a tower completed Construction in 1974. two years later it was open to the public afraid of heights it might not be a tourist attraction for you first the elevators have glass sides and a glass floor as well it takes 58 seconds speeding at 15 miles per hour to take you from the ground floor to the observation deck in the sky and the deck also has glass panels on the floor don't worry though you're not going to fall through they're so strong that they can handle the weight of 35 moves hmm I wonder how they tested that when the tower opened in 1976 a time capsule was hidden in the wall of the lookout level inside you'll find newspapers Canadian coins letters from children and a letter from Pierre Trudeau the capsule will remain there until 2076 and there's more Mount Rushmore actually has a hidden room behind Abraham Lincoln's head but what's inside sculptor goots on Borglum initially had a much Bolder design in mind including moments in American history with the four heads of George Washington Thomas Jefferson Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln but his ideas were too ambitious instead he was given permission to create a Hall of Records a secret chamber that would highlight The History of the United States and any important documents and what's the secret color changing magic of the Taj Mahal in India and the reason is surprisingly simple the large building can be found in the city of Agra in the northern part of the country it was built by Shah Jahan as a monument and a tomb for his wife mumtaz Mahal construction started in 1632 and wasn't completed until 1647. White marble covers the outside of the building and is decorated in Jewels like lapis lazuli Jade turquoise and Amethyst these are placed to create geometric and floral patterns but if you look at photos of the building it doesn't always look the same the color changes depending on the time of day it has a lot to do with how the Sun reflects off the marble it may seem Pinker at dawn Pure White at noon and an orange bronze at sunset some evenings it may even look translucent blue a second building was planned designed by the Shah himself it was a dark reflection of the original instead of white The Plan called for black marble they never completed it it's incredible how even more impressive these already cool monuments seem when you know a few of their secrets

Channel: Bright Side Mystery

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Keywords: #brightside #brightsidemystery #cool #secrets #mysteries

Id: sJMOaaS3aJs

Length: 28min 11sec (1691 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023