Official Declaration of the New 7 Wonders of the World

Right now, little to midnight GMT on mystical date 07.07.07 the New 7 Wonders of the World were officially declaired at marvellous Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal. What drove organizers to organize selection of the new 7 wonders of the world?

Arround 200 B.C. Philon of Byzantium chose seven monuments to be remembered in perpetuity:

• Lighthouse of Alexandria
• Temple of Artemis
• Statue of Zeus at Olympia
• Colossus of Rhodes
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
• Pyramids of Egypt

But lighthouse, Colossus, gardens and mausoleum were destroyed by earthquakes, temple burnt down and statue of Zeus disappeared (burned or collapsed). Only the pyramids passed the test of time.

This called for a new selection and the pyramids became first finalist for the new 7 wonders. Another 20 finalists were selected from 77 great buildings that were built from thousands of years ago till only a few decades ago – and that we can still see today. Under the motto our heritage is our future chance to vote for the new 7 wonders was given to all people of the world.

You can get a glimpse of the declaration event in my commented Flick slideshow (don’t forget to click the Info sign). If you can’t whait to the end of the slideshow here are the results:

Chichén Itzá, Mexico	Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
The Great Wall, China	Machu Picchu, Peru
Petra, Jordan	The Roman Colloseum, Italy
The Taj Mahal, India

List of the new 7 wonders of the world contains my four finalists (1, 3, 4, and 7) but it lacks the Great pyramids, Statues of Easter Island and The Stonehenge.

Added 9.7.: Lesson learned. Barbara has reminded me that this post needs lecturing (it’s somewhat her field of activity). So, on her advice I at least installed English dictionary in my Firefox spellchecker and the results are visible above. We won’t mention grammar at this point. I don’t know if those stupid errors were (not meaning there aren’t any left) a consequence of typing in the middle of the night or just laziness. Fact is that I’m rusty in writing in English so I guess I should practice more.

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