I came upon this a few days ago,
Its a link to a website to select the ‘New Wonders of the World’
There is no scope for nominations, all you can do is vote for the shortlist, presumably the shortlist closed a while ago.
Like any list, there are some that don’t seem to belong, or at least there are better choices.
I’m going to select one, and replace it with something much better, and say why.
I would remove the Statue of Liberty, in engineering terms it isn’t anything special, it was a political gift, and if you want something that represents the idea of the American Dream, then surely Ellis Island is a much better candidate.
My nomination for the Straight Dope Modern Wonder is this,
http://www.eddystoneeel.com/LIGHTHOUSE%20HISTORY.htm
Back in the day, there was no radar (obviously) reefs and rocks were a notorious hazard around the world, with Britain on the path to being the pre-eminent maritime nation, which would go on to colonise North America, suffered particularly.
The Eddystone rocks were particularly dangerous, being on the approach to one of the great ports of the day, Plymouth, and also the English channel routes, around 50 ships a year were destroed on these rocks.
Imagine, 300 years ago, you have no power tools, no engines to power your boats, and you are trying to figure out how to put a structure that can give warning on a bleak rock in the middle of the sea, just a few feet above low tide.
Every day, during those summers, the lighthouse builders would row out and hope they could get onto the rocks and do a little work for a couple of hours at low tide, drilling holes for foundations using only hand tools, slowly, bit by bit ferrying absolutely everything by rowboat, and as the tide came in, they would row all the way back.
It took a year just to get the lower foundation blocks in place and secure, yet amazingly, in just two years, the first lighthouse was up and running in 1698.
Imagine the effort this took, parts of the world hadn’t even been discovered yet, steam engine power was in its infancy, and yet this had been achieved.
Sadly this first structure was washed away in the great storm of 1703, and two days later yet another ship was wrecked on the Eddystone rocks and with the loss of all hands.
The next light house burned down but the most impressive engineering feat designed by John Smeaton stayed up (and this is getting a bit like the Swamp Castle sketch from Monty Pythons ‘Holy Grail’) it remained in place for 127 years.
This third lighthouse was so effective that it became the standard for all those that followed it, many of the engineering principles are in use today.
The Smeaton Lighthouse was even stronger than the rock on which it had been built, those rocks began to crack, so it was replaced with the structure we see today which has withstood everything that the worst of the weather can throw at it for over 120 years, yet it still used Smeatons design but on a larger scale.
I know this is not as well known as some of the other ‘New Wonders’, but this ligthouse perched on a rock in the middle of the sea has saved the lives of generations of mariners and is a testament to the perseverance of mankind, it absolutely exemplifies JFKs speech about going to the moon,
http://www.rice.edu/fondren/woodson/speech.html
You have to remember, that first lighthouse back in 1698, no such thing had ever been done before, no-one knew it was possible, everyone knew it was risky and hard, and without any of our modern technology it must have seemed as great a challenge for those lighthouse builders as it was for those embarking on the space race.
This is my nomination for the Straight Dope New Wonder of the World.