The Great Wall of China
Photo courtesy of the_le_man on webshots.com
Great Wall of China |
The Great Wall of China
Photo courtesy of the_le_man on webshots.com
| What: | Built as a protective barrier against outside invasion, the Great Wall started out seperating the four different states of China before they joined to create a unified nation. The joined wall was begun during the Qin dynasty, but most of what we see today is from the Ming dynasty. The biggest man-made structure in the world, the wall boasts a ful 3,948 miles beginning from the Shanhai Pass to the Bohai Sea. It mostly runs along the border between Mongolia and northern China. The most popular tourist spot is the North Pass, of the Badaling. It was heavily manned when it was created to protect the capital city of Beijing. While some of the touristy parts are maintained and still looking like they did centuries ago, others have fallen to disarray and are popular sites to collect stones for houses. There is also a lot of vandalism and graffiti on much of the remaining wall. |
| Where: | Begins from the Shanghai Pass to the Bohai Sea, in China. |
| When: | Started being built in the 5th century BC and continued being added to until the beginning of the 17th century AD. |
| Why: | Built as a fortification against enemies. Began as walls for four different states before finally being unified as the Great Wall during the Qin dynasty when the emperor succeeded in joining the walls together to protect a then unified China from the Huns. |
| Interesting fact: | The wall was thought to have been the only man-made creation to be seen from the moon when it was published in a book called the Second Book of Marvels in 1938. However, with recent science, we were able to discover that seeing the wall would be near impossible, seeing as the wall is only a few meters wide, much like an airplane runway. It is barely discernable from a near-earth orbit, so how would it be able to be seen by a naked eye from the moon? |