A campaign to choose seven new wonders of the world is in its final stages, finalists have been whittled down to 21 by an international panel of experts. The result will be announced on this coming Sunday (07-07-07), you still have approximately 1 day left to vote for it on New7Wonders.

Let’s review what are the Original Wonders; The original seven wonders of the ancient world weren’t chosen by international consensus. They came about after the historians of ancient Greece began traveling around the borders of their classical empire and noted what monuments caught their eye—sort of like a travel guide for their fellow Greeks.

One funny fact was the [Stonehenge] of England was built 5,000 ago but never made it into the wonders. Maybe the Greeks did not travel up to England??

The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt

The Great Pyramid at Giza is both the oldest ancient wonder and the only one still standing today. It was built as a mausoleum for the pharaoh Khufu around 2650 BC and for over 4,000 years remained the world’s tallest structure.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Iraq

According to legend, 6th-century Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had a colossal maze of waterfalls and dense vegetation planted across his palace for a wife, who missed her lush homeland. Archaeologists still debate the garden’s existence.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece

Built around 450 BC and 40 feet tall, the seated figure of Greece’s Olympic deity was the country’s most revered piece of art. Zeus was so impressive that games’ visitors routinely wept at its sight and the Roman emperor Caligula tried to steal it.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Turkey

Even the ancient historians who saw and compiled the list of wonders couldn’t believe the immense beauty of the marble Temple of Artemis, built in 550 BC by a local king. It was set ablaze a few centuries later by a man seeking fame.

The Colossus of Rhodes, Greece

This statue of the God Helios presided for just 60 years over the harbor entrance on Rhodes, but that was long enough to create a legend. People came to see its 100 feet of ruins for years after it was felled by an earthquake in 226 BC.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, Greece

Both practical and beautiful, the 400-foot lighthouse at the mouth of Alexandria harbor started guiding sailors home around 250 BC. A fire made the lighthouse glow at night and a mirror reflected sun rays during the day, some say up to 35 miles away.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Turkey

Built for a king of little note, this glorified headstone made the list for its incredible marble and gold details, reportedly awe-inspiring to any who saw it. The 4th-century BC monument was eventually dismantled and its stones used in other local building.

References:
Livescience , 7Wonders, New7Wonders

Technorati Tags: Ancient, Wonder, Great Pyramid, Hanging Gardens, Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis, Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, new7wonders, Stonehenge

The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed about 250.000 people and became the most dreadful slaughter of civilians in modern history. However, for many years there was a curious gap in the photographic records. Although the names of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incised into our memories, there were few pictures to accompany them. Even today, the image in our minds is a mixture of devastated landscapes and shattered buildings. Shocking images of the ruins, but where were the victims?

The American occupation forces imposed strict censorship on Japan, prohibiting anything “that might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility” and used it to prohibit all pictures of the bombed cities. The pictures remained classified ‘top secret’ for many years. Some of the images have been published later by different means, but it’s not usual to see them all together. This is the horror they didn’t want us to see, and that we must NEVER forget:

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Signals

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All the watches found in the ground zero were stopped at 8:15 am, the time of the explosion.

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Within a certain distance from the site of explosion, the heat was so intense that practically everything was vaporised. The shadows of the parapets were imprinted on the road surface of the Yorozuyo Bridge, 1/2 of a mile south-southwest of the hypocenter. Besides, in Hiroshima, all that was left of some humans, sitting on stone benches near the centre of explosion, was their outlines.

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The massacre

On August 6, 1945, 8.15 am, the uranium atom bomb exploded 580 metres above the city of Hiroshima with a blinding flash, creating a giant fireball and sending surface temperatures to 4,000C. Fierce heat rays and radiation burst out in every direction, unleashing a high pressure shockwave, vaporising tens of thousands of people and animals, melting buildings and streetcars, reducing a 400-year-old city to dust.

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Beneath the center of the explosion, temperatures were hot enough to melt concrete and steel. Within seconds, 75,000 people had been killed or fatally injured with 65% of the casualties nine years of age and younger.

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Radiation deaths were still occurring in large numbers in the following days. “For no apparent reason their health began to fail. They lost appetite. Their hair fell out. Bluish spots appeared on their bodies. And then bleeding began from the ears, nose and mouth”.

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This photograph shows an eyeball of an A-bomb victim who got an atomic bomb cataract. There is opacity near the center of the eyeball.

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Many of them were fired from their jobs. Hibakusha women never got married, as many feared they would give birth to deformed children. Men suffered discrimination too. “Nobody wanted to marry someone who might die in a couple of years”.

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Yamahata, the photographer of Nagasaki

On Agust 10, 1945, the day after the bombing of Nagasaki Yosuke Yamahata, began to photograh the devastation. The city was dead. He walked through the darkened ruins and the dead corpses for hours. By late afternoon, he had taken his final photographs near a first aid station north of the city. In a single day, he had completed the only extensive photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

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Source [Fogonazos]

More info at the Japanese Congress.

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Technorati Tags: Atomic Bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pictures, Yamahata

The Russian Shuttle Buran (”Snowstorm” in Russian) was authorized in 1976 in response to the United States’ Space Shuttle program. Building of the shuttles began in 1980, with the first full-scale Aero-Buran rolling out in 1984.

The first suborbital test flight of a scale model of Buran took place in July 1983. There were five additional flights of the scale model in following years.

The first and only orbital launch of the shuttle Buran was at 3:00 GMT on November 15, 1988. The flight was unmanned, as the life support system had not been checked out and the CRT displays had no software installed

The vehicle was launched on the powerful Energiya booster into an 247 by 256 km orbit at 51.6 degrees inclination. The Buran orbited the Earth twice before firing its thrusters for reentry. The flight ended at 6:25 GMT when the vehicle touched down at Tyuratum. The Buran 1 mission was limited to 2 orbits due to computer memory limitations.

Although the first orbital flight of Buran was unmanned, it demonstrated much promise. The autopilot that landed the shuttle was able to overcome a 34 mph crosswind to land within 5 feet of the runway center line. Also, of the 38,000 heat shield tiles that covered Buran, only 5 were missing.

As of 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an unmanned second flight in 1993, with a duration of 15-20 days. Due to the cancellation of the project, this never took place.

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Here the comparison of Space Shuttle of USA and Buran

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By now, you may wondering where is it after the first flight? Well it is said to be Abandon in some Ukrainian site. It is standing in the lonely place at Baikonur, not covered with any sort of hangar or anything.

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On May 12, 2002, the hangar, housing a Buran 1.01 orbiter and a mockup of the Energia booster rocket (possibly the actual Buran that flew in 1988), collapsed due to incomplete maintenance, destroying the vehicle. Eight workers were also killed in the collapse of the building’s roof.

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More coverage on Buran from English-Russia:

English Russia – Buran, The First Russian Shuttle

English Russia – Where is Buran Now?

Wikipedia – Buran (spacecraft)

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Technorati Tags: Buran, Russian, USSR, Science, Space, Space Shuttle, Ukrainian

The Volume and Size of 5MB memory storage in 1956. In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data.

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The IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit provides storage capacity of the disk drive was 5MB (referred to at the time as 5 million characters). It was configured with 50 magnetic disks containing 50,000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters.

With the cabinet covers on, the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit measured 5’ 8” tall, 5’ wide and 2’ 5” deep, whilst it weighed in at massive 250kgs. The unit comprised fifty 24” platters, one pair of read/write heads and a pulley system that provided both the vertical and horizontal head movement.

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Foreground, two IBM 350 Disk Storage Units in operation

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References:
Disk Storage Unit – 50 years

IBM – 350 disk storage unit

Newsweek – The Hard Disk That Changed the World

Wikipedia – Early IBM disk storage

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Technorati Tags: IBM, Hard Disk, RAMAC 305, IBM 350, Disk Storage

The immense weapon you can see have existed. Moreover, there were two of these incredible guns. It has been manufactured by Krupp for the third Reich during WW-2. Hitler wanted “a gun able to pierce a meter of stell, seven meters of concrete, or thirty meters of dense earth”.

Three calibers could have been used: 700, 800 and even 1000 mm! Even now, we can hardly imagine how we could manufacture the enormous 290 tonnen barrel, an huge steel pipe, 32 meters long. Monobloc trunion craddles, on which are put the trunion pins of the barrel, are as tall as a 4-floor building. It was ready for action in late 1942.

Unfortunately (for the gun), all its targets where almost down or captured at this time: the Maginot line, Gibraltar…

The only target the Dora crushed was Sevastopol. During five days, the gun shot 48 shells over 7 targets. Its monstruous power put down the forts of the town, delivering never seen damage at each shot.

Dora was broken up before the end of the war, being discovered in the west by American troops some time after the discovery of Schwerer Gustav.

More photos of the monster:

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An 80 cm shell

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Over 2500 unique products from Japan — click now!

Source [Wikipedia] & [Palpatine]

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Technorati Tags: World War 2, WW2, Weapon, Railway Gun, Artillery, Hitler, German, Dora, Gustav