It is a four-story square construction with a height of more than 30 meters (98.4 feet). Its base is 82 meters (269 feet) long in the north, 76 meters (249.3 feet) long in the south, and 64 meters (210 feet) long in the east and west, with a total surface of 5056 square meters. It was built over a period of many years, using millions of bricks, with new material being added to the end as it was destroyed by weather or war.
The wall we see today is only part of a larger structure that once covered an area of hundreds of kilometers (miles). The wall itself is made of stone and has been standing for over 2000 years. But ancient accounts tell us that the wall was not built solely to protect against invasion; it was also built to keep out wild animals and provide food for the emperor's hunting grounds.
In fact, the Great Wall was first built to protect from deer. The Chinese used to hunt them with nets and arrows, but when they realized that the walls were preventing the deer from escaping into other parts of the country, they made changes to their strategy. Now they use guns instead!
The wall was built over many years by multiple governments, starting with Qin Shihuangdi, who ordered its construction. It is said that he planned to build it all the way around his empire just so he could claim that he had done so.
For 492 years (1420–1912), it served as China's royal residence. It has a total size of 0.72 square kilometers (0.28 square miles), with a floor area of 15 hectares (38 acres). It includes about 8,700 rooms in 980 structures spread across 70 royal complexes. It is 961 meters long and 753 meters broad from south to north. The walls are 6 meters high and the gates are 5 meters wide.
It was built by the Ming dynasty king, Chongzhen (1367-1427), as a replacement for his original palace which had been destroyed in a fire. He ordered that the new building be constructed of white jade (which does not age well) for eternity so that it would never have to be rebuilt. But after his death, his son called "The Great" implemented many changes into the palace system to suit their own needs. So instead of being used for eternal life, it was decided that the building be made of red brick instead.
In 1912, the last emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, died without an heir. The nation was going through its first revolution since the fall of the Ming dynasty, so no one paid attention to this news. In fact, only two months later, the new government declared that the empress dowager should take control of the palace. She refused so they forced her husband's daughter by another marriage to marry the current emperor's son.
Height of Shanghai Tower
The "Shanghai Center Building" is a 128-story, 632-meter (2,073-foot)-tall megatall skyscraper in Shanghai's Lujiazui district.
The wall built during the Ming dynasty, the most well-preserved part, is approximately 8,850 kilometers long (5,499 miles). It will take you about a month to walk it if you stop every other day to see its many attractions.
It's been estimated that it cost between 6 and 7 billion dollars to build this great wall. The money came from taxes on people who lived near or inside its border; they had to pay to protect themselves against wild animals and bandits.
The first walls were built in the late 7th century to protect China from attacks by warriors coming over the Gobi Desert. They were made of stone and wood, with some gaps for gun ports. Around 2000 years later, in 1644, the last wall was completed. By then, wars had changed, so the government officials who ordered the building of this wall wanted something more powerful than wooden fences or stone turrets. They got their wish when they used gunpowder weapons to fire large balls at high speed into thick battlements of the new wall.
This new type of defense system was called "gunpowder artillery" and it was invented by Chinese scientists. Gunpowder was first used in war in 9th-century China when fireworks were added to cannonballs to make them go farther.
Copyright © 2020 - 2023 BindleyHardware & Co Inc.
