27 Wonders of the world

CHAPTER 1 The World's Ancient Wonders WE SEE LISTS ON THE INTERNET ALL THE TIME: TEN BEST MOVIES, BOOKS, VACATION PLACES BUT MAKING LISTS ISN'T NEW. Around 140 BCE, a Greek man, Antipater of Sidon, made a list of the Seven Wonders of the World. Most were beautiful buildings or statues in or near Greece. Only one is still standing today. Go online to learn more. The Colossus of Rhodes: a 30-meter-high statue of a god. It only stood for 56 years before it fell down in an earthquake. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: A king called Nebuchadnezzar II built these beautiful gardens for his wife. The Statue of Zeus: a 12-meter-high statue of the Greek god Zeus. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus: When a ruler called Mausolus died, they put his body here. Now buildings for dead people are called mausoleums. The Lighthouse at Alexandria: a 120-meter-tall building to help ships find the land. It also fell down in a big earthquake. The Temple of Artemis: Antipater's favorite wonder. There are only a few stones today to show us where it was. The Great Pyramid: the oldest of the ancient wonders and the only one that is still standing. For 3,800 years, it was the tallest building in the world.

CHAPTER 2 The New 7 Wonders of the World ON THE SEVENTH DAY OF THE SEVENTH MONTH OF THE YEAR 2007, THE NEW7WONDERS FOUNDATION NAMED SEVEN NEW WONDERS. In 2001, Bernard Weber, a Canadian, started the New7Wonders Foundation. He wanted people to know more about the beautiful cities, buildings, and statues in the world. He wanted people to understand how they are important to our history. Weber asked people in every country to vote for their favorite man-made wonder. After everybody voted, there were 77 wonders on the list. A group of experts chose 21 of these. Then, people voted again online and on the phone. Here are the seven new wonders they chose. Petra (Jordan) The Western world knew nothing of this ancient city until 1812. Then Johann Burckhardt from Switzerland discovered it. The Nabataean people built the city between 300 BCE and 100 CE. Many cities are built near mountains, but Petra is inside a mountain! Petra is sometimes called "the rose red city" because of its colors. It was a very important market town— people bought and sold things there. Today, you can see only about 15 percent of the city. The other 85 percent is under the ground. If you want to see Petra, watch the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade The end of the movie is in Petra.

The Taj Mahal (India) Emperor Shah Jahan loved his wife very much. She died in 1631, after she had her fourteenth child. The emperor was so sad that he wanted to build a beautiful temple for her. The next year, work started on the Taj Mahal. About 20,000 men and 1,000 elephants worked for 22 years to build it. A story at the time said that the emperor cut off the hands of the workers when it was finished. He didn't want them to make another monument as beautiful as the Taj Mahal. The Great Wall of China Emperor Qin Shi Huang lived in China in the 3rd century BCE. He was worried about some unfriendly countries, so he built a wall to stop other people. Later, between 1368 and 1644, the Ming Emperors made the wall longer. In the end, it was 8,851 kilometers long. It was very hard, dangerous work to make the wall. More than one million people died from the cold or because they didn't have enough food. For many years people stole stones from the wall to make their own houses. So today, only some parts of the wall are standing.

The Colosseum (Italy) Work began on this building in 72 CE, in the time of the Roman Emperor Vespasian. At one time, 50,000 people came to the Colosseum to watch sports and games. But these weren't the sports we enjoy today. They were fights with men called gladiators or with dangerous animals. Thousands of people died. After a long time these games stopped. Then, between the 6th and 12th centuries, the Colosseum was a place for shops and houses. A large part of the building fell down in an earthquake in 1349, but you can still go to Rome and visit it today. Machu Picchu (Peru) This is called "The City in the Clouds." Around 1450, the Incas started to build Machu Picchu, a beautiful city between two mountains, 2,500 meters above the sea. The city was small. About 750 people lived here, and there were only 200 buildings. No one knows why the Incas built it. Maybe it was a vacation place for an important man called Pachacuti. In the early 1500s, the Spanish came to South America and destroyed many Inca cities. But they did not find Machu Picchu. It was a lost city until American Hiram Bingham discovered it again in 1911. Now lots of tourists visit it.

Chichén Itzå (Mexico) The Mayans built a city in Chichén Itzå because there was water under the ground for their farms. They began to build it in the 6th century CE, but about 1200, they left. Nobody is sure why. When the Spanish arrived in the 15th century, the city was empty. El Castillo, or the temple of Kukulcån, is the most famous building in Chichén Itzå. Kukulcån was a Mayan god. He was half bird, half snake. Twice a year, the light from the sun does something strange on the walls of El Castillo. You can see a snake moving from the top to the bottom. Christ the Redeemer Statue (Brazil) At 30 meters tall, this statue is one of the tallest in the world. It's on the top of Corcovado Mountain. Workers used stone from Sweden. They finished it in 1931. In 2008, lightnings hit the statue on the head and fingers, Then, in 2010, some people painted the statue's head and arms and wrote words on the face. But don't worry. The statue is still standing, and now it's clean again.

CHAPTER 3 Other Wonders THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF WONDERS IN OUR WORLD. In 2011, the New7Wonders Foundation named the New 7 Wonders of Nature. Amazon Rainforest (South America): This rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world. About 60 percent of it is in Brazil, and other parts are in seven other South American countries. The Amazon River goes through the middle of it. Iguazu Falls (between Brazil and Argentina): In some places the waterfalls are 82 meters high. Between November and March, about 13,000 cubic meters of water per second fall into the river below. Table Mountain (South Africa): This 1,100-meter-high mountain is near the city of Cape Town. Jeju Island (South Korea): Many tourists visit this beautiful island to see its beaches, parks, and the famous dol hareubang, stone statues of old men. Komodo (Indonesia): This island is famous because of the Komodo dragon. This animal can be 3 meters long and 70 kilograms. It has big teeth and can be dangerous. Ha Long Bay (Vietnam): There are 1,600 islands here. There are no people on most of them. Puerto Princesa Undergound River (Philippines): This 8.2-kilometer river runs under the St. Paul Mountains and into the South China Sea. These seven places came from a list of 28 possible wonders. It was hard to choose just seven. Some of the ones that did not make the list are Mount Everest, the Grand Canyon, and the Northern Lights.