It’s 1875. There are 38 states in the US. Queen Victoria rules the UK. The Eiffel Tower won’t be built for another 12 years. The Empire State Building — not for another 50! The average life expectancy for a 19th-century female is about 45 years. One woman, born this year, will nearly triple that. Her name is Jeanne Louise Calment...
Most of Europe’s skyscrapers are concentrated in 5 cities. But even combined, all these places have fewer skyscrapers than New York City alone! For a building to be considered a modern skyscraper, it has to be about 490 ft high, which means it should have at least 40 to 50 stories. A story is simply one floor of a building with an average of 14 feet from floor to ceiling.If you had visited the US just before the 1870s, you’d have found only one skyscraper. The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the world’s first high-rise building, with 10 floors. Wow! North America started to construct more and more high-rise buildings. It happened because cities were getting too populated. Every piece of land was too valuable.
I hate to break this to you, but money isn’t actually made of paper, which also proves that money doesn’t actually grow on trees. Most banknotes are 25% linen and 75% cotton, which is why they have such a distinct look and feel. Back in the 19th century, money was made of parchment paper. That’s why people could very easily counterfeit it, unlike now.
Have you ever seen a skyscraper that can change its shape? The creators of the F&F Tower in Panama City had a concept and only $50 million, which isn’t a lot in skyscraper money. So, they couldn’t afford a mistake, and they finished a concrete structure with the 39 upper floors rotating 9 degrees around an axis from the first attempt without spending any extra time or materials. Dubai’s Rotating Tower will look different every time you see it once it’s finished. Each of its 80 floors will rotate 360 degrees individually around the center of the building. The lucky residents will be able to control that rotation, which means they can choose their view from the window. A complete lap should take about 90 minutes. And no, the tower won’t be a huge waste of electricity — it will produce its own energy! Wind turbines between the floors will drive the rotations.
Hey check it out! You could technically live in the Eiffel Tower if you don’t mind residing in a small apartment. Gustave Eiffel designed the tower to feature a private apartment for himself right at the top of the construction. He left the place all neat and tidy, with all the necessary furniture. These days the apartment is home to two mannequins, that of Eiffel himself and his equally famous friend Thomas Edison. A sneak peek of the apartment is available for tourists who purchase a ticket to the top of the tower.
You walk around the pond and take pictures of swimming ducks. Suddenly, you notice that your phone’s battery is low. You press a button on the side of the gadget, and it starts using air to charge its battery. You sit in your electric car and drive a few miles. There are no gas stations or any other charge points around. You don’t need to charge your vehicle because it’s already filled with energy. It gets it straight out of the air. Anywhere in the world, you have a mobile connection and free internet. You have long forgotten about wires, outlets, and USB connectors. All devices are powered by electricity taken from the air, and your body doesn’t get harmed. There are large towers in every city. They produce invisible electrical currents. Energy is everywhere, and there is an infinite amount of it.
Well, looky here. It’s New York City, the Big Apple, The City That Never Sleeps, Hong Kong on the Hudson, The Greatest City in the World, New York, New York: The City So Nice, They Named It Twice. Okay I’ll stop. You thought you knew this city so well, but underneath all that glitz and glamour is a façade; literally. New York is populated with some of the most iconic urban buildings in the world and home to some of the most unique and famous towers. Who would have known that New York was a front for fake buildings? And the cool thing is that there are plenty to search for. Ok, I’m adding that to my bucket list. So, the question is why did they put these fake buildings all over New York?
You’re heading down the highway speeding like there’s no tomorrow in your old car. You arrive an hour late, so your boss gets in your face and fires you. You pack up your stuff from your cubicle and drive back home. When you arrive, you check out some vacancies and see an interesting offer. “Experiment! We’ll give you 1 million dollars, only if you know how to spend it wisely within 15 days.” You laugh it off and apply via your phone. You fill in some basic info about yourself, including your bank account, and then sleep it off.
You’re sitting on the balcony, fiddling with your phone, when suddenly, everything around you starts to turn to dust. Gaping, you put your phone down. You see cars, bicycles, sidewalks, street and traffic lights disappear right in front of your eyes!People in the street are panicking and running in different directions. You glance at your watch, and it vanishes too. You turn to look at your room through the balcony door and see that all your furniture is turning to dust. You look back at the street and see nothing but a dust storm. Your house starts shaking. You run downstairs and stand in the middle of the road. You’re just in time to see the buildings in your neighborhood fade away.
Imagine you’re a movie director looking for beautiful landscapes to shoot a movie. You walk along the picturesque Paraná River and find a perfectly round island in its delta. It’s slightly larger than a soccer field. You come back a few days later and see that the island has changed its position! It’s moved a little to the side and spun around its axis.
We may think that everyday things are boring and can’t surprise us anymore. But that’s not completely true, as some of the things we see on a daily basis have the most fascinating secrets or just simply unknown facts lying behind them.
To this day, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Great Wall in China, and the Colosseum in Italy are among the most-visited monuments in the world. However, even though each country has its beautiful statues and monuments, there are also peculiar ones that are not being visited by many tourists but are still worth our attention. We want to present you with some of these unique finds from different countries that people share on the net.
You’re having breakfast at home and wave at the passengers of a plane passing by your house. Ah, another one. You live on the 739th floor of X-Seed 4000. It’s an entire city contained in one massive skyscraper. It sounds unrealistic right now, but one day it may become a reality. Let’s see what we’d need to make it happen. But first, let’s browse through the list of once tallest constructions on the planet. The Great Pyramid of Giza, originally standing at 481 ft, used to be the tallest structure ever built by humans for over 3,800 years. The Lincoln Cathedral took this title away from the Great Pyramid only in 1311, winning by just one foot [482 ft].
Believe it or not, many popular films and TV series contain mistakes that went unnoticed. It’s hard to tell when you’re first watching them, however, after seeing these movie mistakes, you’ll definitely want to go back and re-watch some of them to see these mistakes in action.
With all its oddities, inventions, and natural wonders, our world can be a pretty amazing place. And just when you think you learned everything there is to know, you come across bits of trivia that catch you by surprise. Knowing some of these fun facts probably won’t advance our everyday lives much, but they’ll surely make any conversation a lot more interesting. And yes, knowing them can actually make you (feel) smarter.
Most of us have an idea of how the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China look today. However, 100 years ago many popular today sights looked absolutely different. For example, in 1911 the researcher Hiram Bingham discovered the city of ancient America — Machu Picchu — completely hidden by thickets of bushes and trees.
Some events leave such a deep imprint in history and culture that they become the markers of the era. Some of them seem very recent, and others don’t. But if you look at them from a different angle and compare them to each other, you will find out some facts that will change your perception of time.
We’ve all seen stereotypes in Hollywood movies and TV shows, many of which are based on old, antiquated conventionalization about someone or somewhere, along with new ones that don’t seem to make sense. Either way, Hollywood tends to use these tropes a lot. Below is a list of stereotypes shared by Reddit users that Hollywood has made about their countries.
Millions of tourists around the world keep visiting the same places, year after year, taking the same photos of famous landmarks. And this is because most people are simply used to doing so. But few of us are aware of the fact that some of the most popular tourist spots are not only crowded, but they also drain our wallets.
About 700 Hollywood movies are released every year. Though filmmakers try to surprise us with diverse plots and colorful visual effects, still, some movies end up looking virtually the same. And while there’s nothing wrong with quoting or referencing other films, it gets tiring seeing the same banal details and plot twists in movies over and over again.
While the famous phrase “To see Paris and die” really means that someone has finally attained their ultimate dream of seeing the city and can now die happy, people today are taking it literally. They are so disappointed by the city, they almost literally want to die after visiting Paris. It’s not the city that they had seen in movies, read about in books, and heard about at travel agencies. And it turns out, this is a worldwide phenomenon.
The glowing lights of the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon with its fantastic views, the Sistine Chapel with the works of Michelangelo... It seems that these and many other sights were created to be admired and photographed. And while you can do the former, the latter may not be as easy as it looks.
In 2014, I made an important decision to make a big change in my life. I left my ordinary life in Kiev, I packed my stuff, and I moved to Paris. This sounds like the beginning of a romantic movie but in fact, it was nothing like a beautiful story about cozy French restaurants, hot croissants, and the view of the Eiffel tower from my window.
The first known riddles appeared in Babylon! And even today, they’re still an excellent opportunity to spend time with friends and to test our capabilities. Riddles are not only interesting, but they’re also useful to people of all ages. They can do all kinds of things like help to improve a child’s vocabulary and help the elderly to avoid dementia.
The web is full of ordinary and insignificant photos, but there are people whose imagination and Photoshop skill can transform these photos drastically. Thanks to them, the photos get a new life with the help of just a couple of tweaks. For example, drawing 2 eyes above a cat’s tail can transform it into a mammoth. Or replacing a motorcyclist’s bike with a cheetah can show us a new type of sport.
There are certain works of art and architecture that are famous the world over. But if you study the history of some of them a little more intently, you’ll find that many of them contain a great deal of mysteries. We at Bright Side decided to compile a list of some of the most intriguing ones. We were amazed at what we found out.
Jeanne Louise Calment had the longest confirmed human lifespan on record: 122 years and 164 days. It seems that fate strongly approved of the way Madam Calment lived her life.
