Structures trivia

Structures

» The seats at Fenway Park in Boston, home of the Boston Red Sox, are made of oak.

» The famed London Bridge spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years. In 1968, the city of London decided to sell its sinking bridge for $2.6 million to Robert P. McCulloch, founder of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, who needed a bridge to connect the city to an island in the lake. The island was created in order to remove an obstruction that blocked water flow from the Colorado River into Thompson Bay. It took three years to carefully dismantle, pack, ship, and reconstruct the landmark bridge in the desert state. It cost more than $7 million to rebuild it in Lake Havasu City. Finally, on October 10, 1971, London Bridge was officially dedicated in Arizona before a crowd of 100,000 in a lavish ceremony.

» The Serpentine Railway, built in 1885 at Coney Island, was the first gravity roller coaster to tie the track end together and return passengers to their starting point without them needing to disembark while the car was placed on the return track. The train, with its passengers seated sideways on a wooden bench, ran atop an undulating wooden structure. The train was slow and took several minutes to complete its circuit.

» The famed London Bridge which spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years from the 1830s until 1968, now connects Arizona's Lake Havasu City's mainland and island. The bridge survived a terrorist attack in 1884 and the bombing from the Germans in both World Wars. But it could not withstand the forces of nature, as it was sinking into the Thames River's clay bottom.

» The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens.

» The famous Citgo sign near Fenway Park in Boston is maintained not by Citgo, but by Boston's historical society.

» The famous Eden-Roc Hotel, in Cap D’Antibes in the French Riviera, is often described as the most fabulous hotel in the world. The President of the Republic, Arab princes, stars of the stage and screen – all have stayed here in this security-conscious Shangri-La where credit cards are not recognized, and hard cash is the only currency. Sara and Gerald Murphy, a rich American couple with very fashionable friends invented the summer season in the 1920s. They convinced the Eden Roc's owner to keep the place open after April, and filled it with guests like F. Scott Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, and Pablo Picasso.

» The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the world's only museum devoted solely to mollusks.