There is no shortage of outstanding major landmarks in the world, many of which have been around for centuries. Bridges, monuments, buildings, and city landscapes across the globe have withstood the test of time. Even though some of them weren’t built to last, they’re so recognizable today that it’s hard to believe they’re relics of the past.
This Italian Bridge Was A Vital Artery Into France
Construction on the Ponte Morandi (Morandi Bridge) began in 1963 and opened four years later in Genoa, Italy. Ever since then, the bridge – which is a part of the A10 motorway – has served as a major link to France and the European route E80. It linked two major parts of Genoa that are separated by the Polcevera river.
The bridge was designed by Riccardo Morandi, an Italian civil engineer widely regarded for his use of reinforced concrete. The Ponte Morandi is comprised of reinforced concrete and built as a viaduct, which is a bridge that is composed of several smaller spans to form an overpass.
Ponte Morandi Succumbed To The Weather
Unfortunately, the Ponte Morandi wasn’t built to last. Genoan citizens discovered this on August 14, 2018, when the bridge suddenly collapsed during torrential rainfall. Almost 700 feet of the bridge collapsed onto the earth below it, including the river it was meant to cross.
There were up to 35 cars and three heavy vehicles that were traversing the bridge at the time of its collapse. 43 people were confirmed dead, while at least 15 were injured and taken to hospitals in critical condition. While many claimed a lightning strike was the cause, engineers blame the structural weakness of the bridge. The entire bridge will reportedly be demolished and rebuilt.
The Lincoln Memorial Was Going To Be Flashier Than It Is
The demand to memorialize the United States’ 16th president came swiftly after his assassination in 1865. Two years later, Congress put forth bills to commission a monument in Abraham Lincoln’s honor.
It took almost 50 years before ground broke to start constructing the memorial and another ten or so until it was finally completed. It was originally intended to have six equestrian statues, 31 pedestrian statues, and a 12-foot statue of Lincoln, but instead, we have the simple, stately version that stands today. At the time of the Lincoln Memorial’s completion in 1922, the reflection pool that sits between it and the Washington Monument was still under construction.
It’s Now A Site For The Nation’s Most Important Movements
The Lincoln Memorial is inscribed with excerpts from two of Lincoln’s most famous speeches: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. He is largely regarded as a “Savior of the Union,” so it’s only right that the monument has served as a site for many protests and speeches throughout the years.
The most notable event in history to occur at the Lincoln Memorial is perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963, which he gave at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In the present day, the Lincoln Memorial sees around 6 million visitors annually.
Shanghai Was A Simple Port Town In The ’80s
Shanghai, China is regarded as the fastest-growing city in the world. In 1989, this was the view overlooking the Huangpu River and Shanghai’s Pudong district. If not for the river, this view is almost unrecognizable compared to how it looks today.
This was because China only started opening up economically to the world in the ‘80s. Before that, Shanghai saw around three decades of famine, drought, reform, and suppression after the Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Things began to improve during the Cultural Revolution of the ‘70s, at the end of which, Shanghai’s then-leader Premier Zhou Enlai and then-President Nixon signed the Shanghai Communiqué.
This Chinese City Is The Work Of The Future
This is present-day Shanghai. Deng Xiaoping, who was China’s leader in 1990, made it his mission to turn Shanghai into the economic and cultural hub it once was and more. According to some accounts, he declared, “If China is a dragon, Shanghai is its head.”
Indeed, Shanghai has developed phenomenally in less than 25 years. It is now a “vertical city” home to some of the tallest building in the world, including the 2,037-foot Shanghai Tower.
Las Vegas Was Nothing Like It Is Today
The Las Vegas Strip is what anyone thinks about when they think of Sin City. But before there was the Strip, there was Fremont Street, which has been around since Las Vegas’s founding in 1905. Fremont Street was the pioneer of anything that happened in Vegas.
In 1925, it became the first paved street in Las Vegas and received the city’s first traffic light in 1931. Though gambling has long been established before it was legal, Fremont Street was one of the first places in Nevada to gain a gambling license. Fremont Street was the hub for Vegas activity back in the day, but now it looks nothing like it did back then.
Fremont Street’s Efforts To Become As Big As The Strip
This is what Fremont Street looks like in the present day and as you can see, it’s more or less a walkway than it is a street. The Golden Nugget obviously got a bright, shiny face lift, but the most striking development is the barrel vault canopy that cloaks it.
It is the main attraction of the Fremont Street Experience, a pedestrian mall with an array of attractions for those who are knowledgeable enough to venture off the strip and into Downtown Las Vegas. Nightly light and sound shows are displayed on the LED canopy above the street, a multi-million dollar installment that has revived business in that area.
The Church Was Rebuilt After 60 Years
After World War II came to an end, citizens of Dresden began salvaging fragments of Dresden Frauenkirche for a reconstruction, though the Communist regime refused to rebuild it. Despite authoritative efforts to turn the area into a parking lot, popular sentiment led to the remnants being declared a memorial against the ravages of war in 1966.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the city moved forward with reconstructing the church – a project that wasn’t completed until 2005. Despite annual attempts by neo-Nazis to march in commemoration of its destruction, they’ve recently been quelled by a human chain of thousands of protestors.
