50 Fun Facts About Seven Wonders of the World

Emma Lazarus's sonnet The New Colossus, named after the wonder at Rhodes, was cast on a plaque for which monument?

The Statue of Liberty received the poem on a bronze tablet fixed inside its pedestal in 1903. Lazarus wrote it in 1883 to help raise money for that pedestal.

Which food was boiled into a soup and added to the mortar holding the Great Wall of China's bricks together?

Sticky rice soup, stirred into slaked lime, made the mortar that holds the wall's bricks together. The grisly legend that workers' bones were mixed in is false.

Which film hero finds the Holy Grail inside a temple whose entrance is really the Treasury at Petra?

Indiana Jones reaches the Treasury in the climax of the 1989 film The Last Crusade. Only the facade is real: the temple's interior was filmed at a studio in England.

Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro had a finger damaged in January 2014 when the statue was hit by what?

Lightning had also hit the statue in a 2008 storm, damaging its fingers, head and eyebrows. Rods in the head and arms are there to carry such strikes away.

Ancient writers say the Colosseum in Rome was flooded early in its history to stage which kind of spectacle?

Mock sea battles, known as naumachiae, are recorded for the arena's first years. They ended once Domitian had underground chambers built beneath the floor.

Tradition says the Temple of Artemis burned down in 356 BC on the very night which conqueror was born?

Alexander the Great later offered to pay for a new temple, but the Ephesians declined, saying it was not fitting for one god to build a temple to another.

At the equinoxes, shadows on El Castillo at Chichen Itza form which creature crawling down the stairs?

A serpent seems to slide down the northern balustrade as the late-afternoon sun casts a row of triangular shadows. The pyramid was a temple to Kukulcán, a plumed snake deity.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the only ancient wonder never proven to exist, belong to which modern country?

Iraq holds the ruins of Babylon, near the present-day city of Hillah, yet no trace of the gardens has been found there. Some scholars doubt they were ever built.

The Statue of Zeus, an ancient wonder, stood at the sanctuary that hosted which sporting festival?

The Olympic Games were run by the people of Elis, who ordered the giant seated god for their new temple to outdo their rivals in Athens. The festival took place every four years.

Which Paris landmark was a finalist in the 2007 New 7 Wonders vote but missed out on a winning place?

The Eiffel Tower was one of thirteen finalists left out when the winners were named. Stonehenge, the Acropolis of Athens and the Sydney Opera House also fell short.

Petra, the rose-coloured city carved into sandstone cliffs and voted a New 7 Wonder, lies in which country?

Jordan counts Petra as its most-visited attraction. The city lay unknown to the Western world until the traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt reached it in 1812.

Machu Picchu, an Inca citadel abandoned around the Spanish conquest, sits on an Andean ridge in which country?

Peru is home to the citadel, which stands about 2,430 metres up on a mountain ridge. Its palace complex is thought to have served as a seasonal royal retreat.

Chichen Itza, the Yucatán city crowned by the stepped pyramid El Castillo, was built by which people?

Maya people built the city, whose pyramid has about 91 steps on each of its four sides. With the top platform counted as a final step, the total may come to 365.

Which Mughal emperor ordered the Taj Mahal built at Agra as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal?

Shah Jahan commissioned the tomb in 1631 and was later buried in it himself, beside his wife. Its name is often translated as Crown of the Palace.

Which coral system, the largest on Earth and visible from space, did CNN name one of the Seven Natural Wonders?

The Great Barrier Reef is made up of more than 2,900 separate reefs and 900 islands off the coast of Queensland. It is the biggest single structure built by living things.

Which rail link with the world's longest undersea section did American engineers name a modern wonder?

The Channel Tunnel runs about 50 kilometres from Folkestone in England to the European mainland. The American Society of Civil Engineers honoured it in 1994, the year it opened.

Sculptures from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis ended up in which London institution?

The British Museum holds slabs of the tomb's frieze showing Greeks battling Amazons. Charles Newton excavated the site in the 1850s and shipped his finds to London.

The ancient Statue of Zeus, seated on a cedarwood throne, was plated in gold and which other material?

Ivory plates were fixed to a wooden frame beside the gold panels. The writer Pausanias reports that the figure was kept coated in olive oil to protect it from damp air.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, the only ancient wonder still standing, was built as the tomb of which pharaoh?

Khufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops, ruled in Egypt's Fourth Dynasty, and his granite sarcophagus is still inside. His tomb was the tallest structure on Earth for over 3,700 years.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus both stood in which modern country?

Turkey holds the sites of two of the seven: Ephesus lies near the town of Selçuk, and Halicarnassus is now a resort on the Aegean coast. Greece and Egypt also had two each.

The Great Pyramid of Giza once gleamed under a smooth outer casing of which white stone, later stripped away?

Limestone from the Tura quarries was ferried across the Nile to form the polished shell. Most of it was later removed, leaving the monument about eight metres shorter than when new.

In legend, which Babylonian king built the Hanging Gardens for a wife who missed her green homeland?

Nebuchadnezzar II is said to have raised the gardens for Amytis, his queen from Media. Yet his own long building inscriptions never mention a garden.

Which sculptor of the giant Athena inside the Parthenon also created the ancient Statue of Zeus?

Phidias built the seated god around 435 BC, and it stood about 12 metres tall. His workshop was rediscovered in the 1950s, close to where ancient writers said the figure was made.

The Colossus of Rhodes, the last ancient wonder built and the first to fall, was a bronze statue of which god?

Helios, the sun god, was the patron of Rhodes, and his figure rose about 33 metres. An earthquake felled it after only 54 years, so all seven wonders stood together for less than 60 years.

The people of Rhodes paid for the Colossus by selling what, abandoned by the army of Demetrius in 304 BC?

Siege equipment left behind after the year-long attack fetched 300 talents. Iron and bronze from the abandoned weapons were also reforged for the statue itself.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria stood on which island, whose name gave Italian and Spanish their word for lighthouse?

Pharos was a small island at the western edge of the Nile Delta, and its name lives on in the word faro. The tower took twelve years to build and cost 800 talents of silver.

The ancient Greeks called the seven wonders 'theamata', a travel-guide word that translates as what?

Sights, or things to be seen, is the meaning, because the list worked as a guidebook for Greek travellers. The word for wonders, thaumata, came into use later.

The best-known brick and stone stretches of the Great Wall of China were built under which dynasty?

Ming rulers, in power from 1368 to 1644, strengthened the wall after a defeat by the Oirats at the Battle of Tumu. Earlier fortifications were mostly rammed earth.

The Colosseum is believed to take its name from a colossal bronze statue of which emperor that stood nearby?

Nero had the giant figure set up at the entrance to his Golden House, and Hadrian later moved it beside the amphitheatre. It was modelled on the Colossus of Rhodes.

Which ancient trading people carved the rock-cut tombs of Petra, the New 7 Wonder that was once their capital?

Nabataeans, once desert nomads, grew rich by turning the city into a hub on the incense trade routes. Its population peaked at about 20,000 in the first century AD.

Christ the Redeemer has looked out over Rio de Janeiro since 1931 from the summit of which mountain?

Corcovado rises about 700 metres inside Tijuca National Park, and its name means hunchback in Portuguese. A priest first proposed a monument on the peak in the 1850s.

The concrete figure of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro is covered in a mosaic of which stone?

Soapstone was chosen because it lasts well and is easy to work, and it covers a frame of reinforced concrete. Restorers have since replaced parts of the outer layer.

Which country was home to Paul Landowski, the sculptor who created Christ the Redeemer for Rio de Janeiro?

France also supplied Albert Caquot, the engineer who helped build the figure in reinforced concrete. Its face was the work of a Romanian sculptor, Gheorghe Leonida.

Which Yale lecturer brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911 and later became a US senator?

Hiram Bingham was really looking for Vilcabamba, the last Inca capital, when he reached the ruins. He later served as governor of Connecticut for a single day.

Machu Picchu's name is often translated as 'old peak' from which language of the Andes?

Quechua uses machu for old and pikchu for a peak or summit. The mountain beside the ruins, Huayna Picchu, takes the opposite name: young peak.

Which emperor, founder of the Flavian dynasty, began building the Colosseum in Rome in the early AD 70s?

Vespasian paid for the arena from his general's share of war booty, as an inscription found on the site records. He died before it was finished, and his son Titus held the opening games.

The Colosseum was paid for with treasure the Romans seized from the Temple of which city in AD 70?

Jerusalem was sacked in the First Jewish–Roman War, and the spoils of its Temple funded the arena. Prisoners of war are often assumed to have joined the workforce.

Mumtaz Mahal, the Mughal empress whose tomb is the Taj Mahal, died from which cause?

Childbirth claimed her as she delivered the couple's fourteenth child, a daughter named Gauhara Begum. Her grieving husband commissioned the tomb that same year, 1631.

After the Colossus of Rhodes fell, an oracle at which sanctuary persuaded the islanders not to rebuild it?

Delphi was home to the oracle that made the people of Rhodes fear they had offended their patron god. They turned down an Egyptian king's offer to pay for the rebuilding.

The Taj Mahal stands on the bank of which river, which also flows through Delhi on its way to the Ganges?

Yamuna water once fed the gardens by way of an underground reservoir. The riverside was left open, while red sandstone walls enclose the complex on the other three sides.

Which UN agency advised on nominees at first, then publicly distanced itself from the 2007 New 7 Wonders vote?

UNESCO said in 2007 that it had no link with the campaign, since its own rules require it to give equal status to every World Heritage Site. It called the poll a media campaign.

Oxford scholar Stephanie Dalley argues the Hanging Gardens of Babylon really stood in which Assyrian capital?

Nineveh had well-documented palace gardens built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib. Dalley suggests that over the centuries the two cities became confused.

Which arsonist is said to have burned the Temple of Artemis in 356 BC purely to win everlasting fame?

Herostratus confessed under torture that he wanted to be remembered forever. Ephesus then passed a law forbidding anyone to mention him, yet his name became a byword for fame at any cost.

Halicarnassus, the city of the ancient wonder known as the Mausoleum, is which modern resort town on the Aegean?

Bodrum grew up on the site, and a model of the vanished tomb is on show in its museum of underwater archaeology. The tomb was the last of the six lost wonders to be destroyed.

Which crusading order broke up the ruined Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in the 1400s to fortify its castle?

Knights Hospitaller, based on Rhodes, reused the tomb's stone and marble reliefs in their Castle of St Peter. A few surviving sculptures were set into the walls as decoration.

Machu Picchu is believed to have been built around 1450 as a royal estate for which Inca emperor?

Pachacuti turned the small chiefdom of Cusco into the Inca Empire. No written record from his day confirms the link to the estate.

Which Mughal ruler deposed his father, the builder of the Taj Mahal, and confined him in Agra Fort?

Aurangzeb seized power in 1658, and his father spent his last years under house arrest within sight of the tomb. He was buried there beside his wife in 1666.

The New 7 Wonders winners were announced on 7 July 2007 at a football stadium in which European capital?

Lisbon staged the ceremony at the Estádio da Luz. The seven winners had been chosen in a worldwide popularity poll, by free voting on the web and by telephone.

Which waterfall on the Zambezi, one of CNN's Seven Natural Wonders, is known in Lozi as the smoke that thunders?

Victoria Falls stretches 1,708 metres across the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. David Livingstone named it after his queen in 1855, but the Lozi name remains in common use.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria was commissioned by which Macedonian general, who made himself king of Egypt in 305 BC?

Ptolemy I ordered the tower soon after taking the crown, and it was finished under his son. Legend says he wanted to guide ships safely past islanders who lived by wrecking them.