What a wonderful world

Being in Olympic National Park, which is a place of extraordinary natural beauty, combined with spending enough time in the car that we ran out of other things to talk about, resulted yesterday in a heated family debate about the Seven Wonders of the World.

The debate raged unchecked until we drove back into an area with cell phone coverage and were able to ask the Google to resolve, once and for all, who was right and who was an idiot.

Well, it turns out it isn't quite so clear-cut. Depending on who you ask, and what type of "wonder" you have in mind, the list can get pretty long pretty quickly.

I was intrigued to discover the origin of the first list: it was included in a guidebook used by Hellenic sight-seers exploring the Mediterranean rim. Given the ancient Greek focus, it is not surprising that the seven featured there were: Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

However, since then a number of other lists have been made, and people have been less displined about keeping their list to seven or even restricting their list-making to worthy topics.

The list of the Seven Wonders of the Medieval World still manages to keep it together pretty well - Stonehenge, Colosseum, Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, Great Wall of China, Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, Hagia Sophia and Leaning Tower of Pisa. Good list, right?

The Seven Wonders of the Natural World is also pretty strong: Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Mount Everest, Aurora, Paricutin volcano, and Victoria Falls. Very respectable.

Things start to get a little messy with the Seven Wonders of the Modern World
One list includes things like the Brooklyn Bridge (ok), Panama Canal (sure), Hoover Dam (I suppose...), Chunnel (not so sure), London sewerage system (um...), and the CN Tower (excuse me?).

Including the CN Tower on any list just makes me wonder who let the Canadians have any say in this whatsoever.

And in closing let me just say that the fact that Andre the Giant doesn't appear on any list strikes me as a glaring oversight.