Seven Wonders of the Natural World

You've heard of the Seven Wonders of the World right? Well, you may or may not know this, but the wonders of the world have changed recently. The original seven wonders were named in a poem written in 140 BC by Antipator of Sidon. Can you name any of them? Chances are, most of you know only one of the seven. There's a reason for that though. Here they are:

• Pyramid of Giza in Cairo, Egypt
• Hanging of Babylon in Iraq
• Statue of Zeus in Olympia, Greece
• Temple of Artemis in Turkey
• Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Turkey
• Colossus of Rhodes in Rhodes, Greece
• Lighthouse of Alexandria in Alexandria Egypt

The reason most of us only know of one of these is because it is the only one of the seven that still exists (The Pyramid of Giza). The rest have all been destroyed by either fire, earthquakes, or some other causes. What I learned tonight is that the seven wonders were replaced by a vote. That sounded kind of weird to me, that we could vote out these original wonders, however, if they don't exist and people can't marvel at them, why not replace them? So they have been replaced with the following:

• Pyramid of Giza (this one stayed naturally)
• Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Chichen Itza in Yucatan, Mexico
• Colosseum in Rome, Italy
• Great Wall of China in China
• Machu Picchu in Cuzco, Peru
• Petra in Jordan (my in-laws have been here and their pictures are BREATHTAKING!)
• Taj Mahal in Agra, India

So what is the purpose of this post?? Well, while researching these wonders, I came across the website of the New7Wonders Foundation. This foundation is putting together an online poll to get people across the globe to vote for the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Guess what is one of the finalists??? KILIMANJARO!!



In case you can't tell by the countdown on my blog, Justin and I are climbing Kilimanjaro in December 2010. It is so awesome that it is one of 28 finalists to be considered for the Seven Natural Wonders. The voting for it is still ongoing so PLEEEEEAAASSSSEEE go vote for Kilmanjaro. Right now, it's in the bottom 14, so she needs your votes! Click here to pull up the voting website and then click on the green button that says "Vote now for the new 7 wonders of nature". You can also vote for 6 others. You have to register and confirm your email address for your vote to count but they don't send crap emails or anything. VOTE NOW! I would love to be able to say I've been to one of the Natural Wonders of the World :)