Stuff You Should KnowSelects: How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work, Part II
In this classic episode, we finish revisiting our 2017 tour of the best sights of the ancient world when we get deep into the history of a lighthouse that stood for 1200 years, an unsettling statue of Zeus, the world’s first mausoleum, and Chuck’s favorite, the Colossus of Rhodes!
Chuck here.
I hope everyone's doing well on this lovely Saturday. I gotta say, if you've been sitting around for two weeks wondering what the other seven Wonders of the Ancient World are, well, that is some serious patients, my friends. So here it is Part two, continuing from two weeks ago, How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w O'Bryant, and there's guest producer Noel again. And that makes this Stuff you Should Know Part two.
That's right.
Did you ever see hot Shots Part two? The sequel?
No, you know, I didn't see a lot of those movies at all, except for the airplane movies and the naked gun movies.
The hot Shots movies were worth seeing.
Did not see those. Did not see any of the scary movies.
Oh, the scary movies? You haven't seen those?
Nope?
All of them are good, Like every single one of those are good.
Really?
Yeah.
I did record a movie crush yesterday with uh for the.
Movie Scream though, Oh yeah, with who Nate Bargatzi uh huh comedian. Sure, so we It was interesting that I had to do Scream research in like that movie changed like horror movies were on their last legs.
Yes, they were.
Not to say that something else might not have come along, But it was Scream that like revitalized a genre.
Yep, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, it was kind of a watershed movie.
Did we talk about that in the horror movies that changed the the genre? I'm pretty sure we had to.
Boy, if we didn't, we missed out.
Well. If we didn't, we probably just said and obviously Scream we don't even need to mention that.
Well, it launched the Scream franchise. It launched the scary movie franchise in a way m hm oh yeah, and relaunched a genre.
Yeah, so scary movies we're seeing hot shots is worth.
Seeing naked guns were seeing.
Of course, although I would put either one of the hot shots up against the third naked gun any day of the week. That's that's that's my.
Bookie over the third naked gun. Yeah, okay, that's fair.
Yeah, and then don't get me started on what was it like the god Son? But what the god Son?
I don't know what that is.
It was like a Godfather spoof that Leslie Nielsen was in with Dom de Luise. I haven't even seen five minutes of it.
I don't even know what that is. And you stump me, Oh good, thank you. Well, that's a good start to this episode. Do you think you're welcome?
Thank you? Uh so, Chuck, Yes, we're moving on. We've already talked about the Great Pyramids at Cufu, we talked about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Temple of Artemis at afisis right, all three of them top top notch.
Yeah.
And if you don't know what we're talking about now, and this is your first episode of stuff, you should know. Ever, this is the second of a two part episode.
There you go on the.
Seven Ancient Seven Wonders the Ancient World, and here's part.
Two, right, and we're going to start with the statue of Zeus at Olympia.
Yeah.
To say it like that, there's no other way to say it.
That's how Well, who's the guy's name, the the boxing guy.
That guy I don't know his name.
Yeah, he used to stand at the statue of Zeus and say that on an hourly basis.
Yep, it's pretty pretty amazing stuff.
So this one is one of my favorites, but not my favorite. I promise that my favorite was in here, but this is not quite it. Okay, although it's close, because you know, this is this is the main deal here, Olympia Zeus. This is now run of the mill god and some cast off city.
No, it was the sight of the first Olympics, so it was a pretty important city.
Very important it was.
It was nowhere near Mount Olympus though, curiously, but it was pretty pretty important, right, Yes, this one, to me is the most ho hum of them all. Oh yeah, I'm not quite sure why, but I am just kind of like whatever about it?
All right? Well the temple. Let's talk about the temple at first.
Okay, And also I should warn you that this article has the proportions wildly incorrect.
Oh the how tall it was?
Yeah?
All right? What is it? For real?
This thing? This article says it was two hundred and ten feet tall. That's a twenty story building. Yeah, the temple was not as tall as a twenty story building. It was sixty eight feet tall.
How did they get it that wrong?
I don't know. I just don't know, it's staggering. It's as staggering as this temple would have been had it been two hundred feet tall.
And it doesn't even say it was somewhere between sixty eight and two hundred and ten feet, right, it's weird.
Yeah, that's annoying.
Everything else is right about it though. Okay, so it was sixty eight feet tall. Still pretty impressive, sure.
For the time.
Well yeah, but I would have to say if somebody, if you were driving through Dunwoodie he saw a sixty eight foot tall temple, yeah, you would probably still be impressed, even though somebody just built it. So I think it's still impressive even today.
Yes, so the temple's frail impressive, But inside we're talking about the statue mainly the Greek artists. Phidias was commissioned, and I imagine these artists were paid pretty handsomely for these jobs.
Yeah, because you know, there's only a few of them who are capable of doing this at the time.
Yeah, I mean there are only a few people in the world could do this now, right on something of this scale. So they said, hey, Zeus is the man. We want a statue of Zeus. And he said yeah, I can knock that out. It's four fifty BC. Shouldn't take me too long. Eight years later he was finished.
Right, and he used some really weird materials. Like so the temple itself, it was like a standard temple, sixty eight feet tall, like all of them were a bunch of columns, that kind of thing. But the statue inside is apparently what was the big draw. And one of the reasons why it was something to see was because Phidias used ivory and gold rather than marble, which is it was pretty much what you used to make a statue back at that time. And they think one of the reasons why he used or not ebony, but ivory and gold was right. But the reason why they thought that was because he was building a statue to Zeus, right, so it needed to be special. This is like the king of the gods.
Yeah, and ivory was definitely something that people would travel to see a statue made of ivory of Zeus. So basically, Zus is sitting down in this statue, and he's sitting just straight up. He's not like like you know how the Lincoln and his memorials kind of chilling in his seat.
Zeus is not chilling. He's sitting up ready for action.
Yeah, he's like, what'd you say? What'd you say?
Kind of The statue itself was about fifty feet high, which is super impressive. Like when you see a rendering of what someone look like standing at the base of this thing, it's really pretty striking.
And one of the things they said about it was that if he stood up, he would have his head would have burst through the roof of the of the temple. Yeah, which was probably pretty cool to see too.
He was sitting down at fifty feet right, totally would have.
Right, he would have just been like Sue smash. So he's holding in one hand a statue Nike, So it's a statue holding a statue, and Nike is a wing goddess a victory, right, so it's kind of like his version of tinker Bell hanging out in his hand. And on the other hand he's holding a scepter, which is pretty appropriate for the King of the gods. And again he's seated on this throne. And yeah, if you look at artists rendering of them, we should say here, most of this stuff, by the time these lists were written were already aged and then they crumbled over time, so we actually don't know exactly what they looked like. Some people saw him firsthand, but a lot of this information comes from second hand sources or even further down the chain than that, so we're not exactly certain of what they looked like. But for most of these, because they were so widely regarded as seven Wonders of the ancient world, that you have to see that enough people wrote about him talked about him that if you really spent some time, you could put these sources together and come with probably an accurate description of what it looked like.
Yeah, for sure.
The remarkable thing about this one is, apparently, was the expression on Zeus's face. Not only is he sitting straight up ready for action, he just had this look on his face.
It was kind of intimidating.
I guess you could say, you've disappointed me and your mother.
That's what it.
Said, and the legend has it, and I don't buy this at all, But Phidias said that once I'm finished with this saying, he asked for Zeus's blessing on the sculpture, and a bolt of lightning struck the temple at that very moment.
I don't believe it.
No, No, as a matter of fact, if you do believe that, right in so we can tell you that you're wrong. So there were a couple of issues with this statue. Number one, it was built a couple hundred years a few hundred years before Christianity began and then started to spread in the area. Once that happened, the worshipers of Zeus who still remained, said we need to get this out of here. These Christians, they don't play around. They're going to get rid of this thing, right, And they moved the statue to Constantinople and it stayed there safe for a while, actually apparently housed in a palace. But one of the things about the statue was it was made of gold and ivory, but those things were overlaid on top of a wooden sculpture. Yeah, which is kind of like it's pretty slack phidious. Maybe you should have stuck with the marble. Maybe, But the palace in Constantinople caught fire.
Yeah that's a problem because marble doesn't burn, doesn't.
No, it doesn't.
Yeah, So it would have survived, but he cheaked out, let's be.
Honest, Yeah, he phoned this one in.
Yeah, and they were right to have moved that thing, because the Christians did come in and take care of business, shut down that temple in three ninety one a d. But by that time the statue was gone at least. But yeah, burned it fire. So earthquakes and fires are taking out all of the wonders.
Earthquakes, fires and Christians. Yeah, the great level is pretty much so back in I think in nineteen fifty, this guy and again like this stuff just sat in the realm of legend for a long time. Although I think the I think the ruins of the temple itself are still around, aren't they that?
I'm not sure.
I think they might be. I like, over the last two days, I've seen so many pictures of ancient temple ruins that I'm like, which, wait, which one is that? Yeah, bush right, I think this one may still be around in Olympia, the ruins of the temple, like you can still make out a couple of steps leading up to that kind of thing, and there's like the posts of a couple of pillars or whatever. But they found in nineteen fifty the workshop that Phidias used beside the temple, and apparently we're able to recreate using the molds that they found probably what the statue looked like, which is pretty impressive, just working from old molds.
Yeah. Not only that, but.
These were on coins, right, Oh, yeah, that's right, that's the other one. Yeah, they were on Greek coins. So this isn't one where you really had to guess so much what it looked like because on those coins there there's a lot of detail about what it looked like. And because coins, you know, they were originated there, just where they ended up eventually would give a little indication on how far people had traveled come see this saying when they carry those coins.
Back, Yeah, it made me wonder, like were those coins currency or were they like souvenirs, like if you go to Dollywood or Kennedy Space Center or something like that and get a coin made.
Yeah, I didn't think about that.
I wonder because I mean, this was an age where there were tourists and they were already selling the replicas of the Temple of Artemis as tourist mementos. I wonder if these coins were that team. Yeah, pretty pretty neat to think about ancient tourists.
Should we take a break, Yeah.
All right, I'm gonna contemplate that, and we'll be back right after this.
Okay, chuck, here's my second favorite.
Let's hear it.
This is in your favorite Huh Are you sure you have a favorite?
I do. We're not there yet.
Okay, all right, well this is my second favorite, the mausoleum at Halikar Nassas.
Okay, you don't like this one?
That was?
All right? Masoleums, I don't know. You see one, you see them all?
Well, this is the original one. Like the word mausoleum came from this structure.
Yeah, that only goes so far with me. Oh, I love that, the original thing.
Yeah. I thought I thought you were like an etymology kind of guy. Oh I can be, but just not with mausoleum.
Yeah. I don't know.
There's something about mausoleums that bugged.
Me because there's dead people interred inside.
There's just a lot of a lot of hubbub for a dead body.
Oh I see, I see. Yeah that makes sense.
You know.
Yeah, I don't want to knock it though.
Well, okay, we'll just stop right here.
Then, if you're King Masulis, you deserve to to have this named after you.
I would say that, especially if you're married to your sister and she's madly in love with you, and you've just died.
Yeah, that was a little weird.
He was the Persian king of Karia, and he was indeed married to his sister Artemisia.
Yeah, and she.
Really really was in love with her brother.
Yeah and husband.
And he was from what I understand, he seemed like a pretty successful ruler. They had the mausoleum under construction while he was still alive, and he died while before it was finished, obviously, but his sister Artemisia, sister wife, Artemisia was so broken up by it. She said, all right, stop, stop what you're doing. This is not good enough. This has to be the most amazing memorial anyone's ever made to their husband. Brother. I've got to get in touch with all of the greatest sculptors of the realm. And she did. She got in touch with at least five of the greatest sculptors alive at the time, and they were headed by a guy named Pitheus, who not only was one of the sculptors, he was the overseeing architect of the entire project.
Yeah, so like he architected the whole thing. And then she got a one sculptor per Si to embellish the outside scope us Brexis, Reaxis, Leo, charis ole A, and Timothia.
That one's easy.
That one is easy, and this one has often been called because she had all these different people working on it. And not only that, but I think for years afterward it became a place where artists could exhibit and showcase their work. So in the end this thing ended up being I think, not as coherent is what you would think something might be when you just hire one person to work on it.
For this episode and the last one, I went to the site on museum. Have you ever heard of it?
Yeah?
I think so.
They were very helpful in researching this. And one of the things the way they put it was that so during construction, Artemisia died before it was completed, and the five sculptors who were running the show looked at each other and they were like, let's keep going. We could stop here and leave it unfinished. But it became don't do that though, well no, no, not true. Ones. It became a temple, a monument, not just to Mazillius and Artemesia who were entombed inside, but it became a monument to art as.
Well, that we can do whatever we want now, guys.
Right, And they did so, they went ahead and they completed it, and it was a pretty impressive structure.
Yeah.
The structure yourself, was about one hundred and forty feet tall.
Is that right?
Yeah, I believe though that's a relief.
The base was about one hundred feet twenty four steps tall.
Yeah, and then on either side of the steps, flanking the steps were crouched lions, which is pretty cool.
It's always cool.
Around the outside of the second the second tier where you would walk into on all four corners there were soldiers bounded on horseback, sculptures of them protecting the place.
Yeah. Yeah, what else?
Pliny the Elder said, this thing is four hundred and forty feet and the perimeter the thing is four hundred and forty feet So it was large, thirty six columns. It was a big structure, very impressive. I didn't get from the pictures that I saw of renderings. It didn't look too busy to me.
No, I'm not sure. The only place I saw that kind of shade being thrown at it was in this house stuff Works article.
Yeah, I mean I know that there were different people working on it, but it didn't look like I expected when I saw it to look.
Like a big mess, and it did not look like a big mets.
No, it looked pretty neat and tidy. Right, Yeah, So one of the things that I love about this thing so again, Ardemisia and Masilius are entombed inside this thing. But it's also like just a place you would go, you know, take a date or something on a Sunday afternoon in the city of hell canisis Helicarnassis, Right, One of the cool things about this is that this structure stood for hundreds and hundreds of years after the city of Helicarnassis fell to ruin around it.
Yeah, that is so cool.
Just the imagining this abandoned, ruined town and in the middle of it is this one hundred and forty foot tall mausoleum, the world's first mausoleum, with all these ornate sculptures around it. This is almost completely out of context with its surroundings now that the town is falling to ruin.
Yeah, that is pretty cool for sure.
But like all these other ones, earthquakes would eventually take care of business in the fourteen hundreds and shake this thing down and again, like a lot of these other stories, in fourteen ninety four, they used the Knights of Saint John of Malta said hey, let's take all this scrap and use it for our own castle.
Yeah, a city as Helicarnassis fell to ruin. Another city nearby grew up called Bodrum, and the ruins at Helericarnassus. You would go to Bodrum today to view the ruins of Helicarnassis. The mausoleum, i should say, but the big draw apparently is the Knights of Saint John's castle, and to build that castle, some of the scraps that they used were from the mausoleum. So you can still see original parts of the mausoleum, but they've been incorporated into the structure of the castle that you would view. Yeah, which is cool. So it's still around in some way, shape.
Or form totally. That's very cool.
But that earthquake that got it in the fourteen hundreds, it actually had a weird way of preserving some of it.
Right.
Oh yeah, So there are three big things that keep coming up.
Right.
There is earthquakes that keep happening. There's people using scraps to build other cities nearby, and then there's the British Museum. Those three things figure into the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World big time because there's a piece of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World somewhere in the world outside of its original location. It's probably in the British Museum. And that's the case with some a few things from the mausoleum at Helicarnassis. They think that what happened was the earthquake toppled the sculpture of Masulis and Artemisia riding a chariot pulled by four horses. It was very famous that was on the top of the mausoleum, that it fell and was covered by rubble so that it was protected until it was finally excavated in the nineteenth century when they found huge old chariot wheel. And then they think the two sculptures of Artemisia and Mausoleus and now they're all in the British Museum. But they think that earthquake had a weird way of protecting it from looted and reused by the Knights of Saint John later on.
Amazing, I'm telling you that's why it's my second favorite. Well, we're coming upon my favorite. I wondered if this was it, the Colossus of Rhodes.
It's a good way to say it.
So yeah, I like this one.
This was ancient Greece, and this one was the granddaddy of them all statue wise, this one was even bigger than the statue of Zeus at Olympia. Third century, and Rhodes was an island, still as an island, and Macedonians came knocking on the door, and they were angry, and they wanted the help of the people of Rhodes because Ptolemy was Ptolemy one that is was was conquering, and they said, we need your help here. And the people of Roads said, hey, we're not really, we don't want to get involved in all that. We kind of like it here on the island, living our peaceful lifestyle here.
Well. Plus, if they was in anybody they were allied with, it was Ttolemy. Yeah, yeah, but they wanted to stay out of any wars.
They just weren't into it, right, So they rebuffed the Macedonians and they left, but they left behind a bunch of supplies and equipment.
I'm not sure why they did that actually.
So this article is so bizarre.
Man.
The Macedonians besieged roads for over a year, and they had these huge war machines that were made of like bronze and wood and metal, and they would pull these huge machines up to the city walls and like they had catapults on top, and they were trying to crush the city for a year. And when the Roodians finally overcame the Macedonians, they were like, well, we're just leaving the stuff behind. It's too big to move. It didn't work anyway, so we'll leave it. Yeah, that's why they left it. This article puts it in a really weird way.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
So they ended up using like selling away that stuff right to make the money to build in part the statue.
Yeah, and they reused some of it directly for the statue. Like that huge thing that they used to besiege the city they pulled up to the walls, they actually used that as scaffolding to build the statue with. Heck, yeah, yeah, it's making plowshers out of uh, I don't know. Guns.
So they used the sculptor Charros of Lindos, and he said, I got this one under control, and he used all these different materials iron, bronze, stone, and this one I'll have wrapped up, oh in about twelve years, which they said, that's about right.
Yeah, that's not bad for what they did here.
Yeah, I mean this was one hundred and ten feet tall.
Yeah, it had a skeleton of iron, and inside the skeleton for structure, it had huge stone columns running through it.
Yeah.
And yeah, it was like the actual statue itself was about as big as the Statue of Liberty is today and followed like a pretty similar structure, but like a thousand or so years before, a couple thousand years before.
Yeah, people think from written accounts that it was holding a torch like Lady Liberty does, and that the face was modeled after Alexander the Great. Some say, and here's where it gets interesting to me is if you look up pictures of this thing, you will likely see it standing a straddle the entrance to the harbor, so literally standing there like kind of with his legs spread, and you would have to sail a ship between his legs to.
Get into the harbor.
You shouldn't look up, Yeah, don't look because the detail was really amazing.
Very amazing, and one hundred and ten feet high, like you know what you're going to be staring at. So there are accounts and there are plenty of illustrations and other things that support this, and it looks trust me, if you look it up, it looks very cool. Like you know, they into they were into making things this tall, just because it was so mind blowing.
But also they were thanking their patron god Helios for spading them from having to go to war, which is pretty cool. I that's one of the reasons I like this one is they were saying, like, you know what, we stayed out of war, we managed to remain at peace. We're going to build a monument to our god who we assume helped us out.
Yeah.
But when they did these things, like with most of these, I love that they were just like, well, you know, twenty foot high statue will be great.
That's impressive.
Like they would try and build things as large as humanly literally possible engineering wise at the time.
I see your point. Yeah, that is pretty neat.
So when you look at pictures of this straddling the harbor, it's just like it's enormous. It's huge, Unfortunately, that's probably not what he how he stood, right. That's the downer here is that they didn't really have the the materials or the knowledge or the skill to do something like that. Like the reason that statues back then were basically straight up and down is because that you needed that those legs to support the rest of the statue.
Yeah, and they were atop a pedestal that could hold the weight of the statue above it.
Yeah.
They would Also if each foot was on either side of the harbor, that's usually not the strongest solid ground you can find, no, no way, So they wouldn't have had any means of reinforcing the ground beneath it, So it would have just sunk or fallen right over.
Yeah. Yeah.
And plus the other thing too, Chuck, was that it would have closed the harbor down, and they relied on the harbor for their economy.
Yeah, so it's probably unlikely that it looked as cool as it looks in pictures. And what happened to this one fifty three years later?
Yes, earthquake? Yep, fifty three years that is so quick.
Yeah, that didn't last long at all.
No, So the thing fell and they think that it probably was located closer to the center of town. Yeah, somewhere inland. But that when it fell, it crushed a bunch of people's houses and businesses, and some of it probably fell into the harbor itself.
That's right.
And this one was notable because I think because it was so young when it fell. It's still it's not like they were like, oh, let's get rid of this thing. They let it lay there as a tourist attraction in its prone state for many, many years, and people would come far and wide to go visit the fallen statue.
Yeah, for almost a thousand years. It's crazy. Yeah, it still stated a tourist attraction. Like apparently the cool thing to do was to try to put your arms around the thumb.
Yeah, the thumb was bigger than most statues.
Right, Like people couldn't get their arms, they couldn't touch their hands around the thumb.
Amazing.
And apparently also the arms fell off pretty They may have even fallen off first during the earthquake. But did you say it broke off at a the knees, just below the knees, no, so those probably stayed for a while. But the they like.
From the knee down, yeah, yeah.
I'm sure, which looks a little weird, Like that picture of the person who suffered spontaneous combustion all that was left their one leg, I'll bet it looked kind of like that. But the stuff that was on the ground, like you could see into like the armholes, and apparently even that was just his breath ticking cavern. It was just such a massive structure.
They're like, have you seen in those armholes?
Yes?
I have.
I've seen all the armholes all over the world. I'm the best tourist ever.
Have you tried to hug that thumb?
I have a subscription to Monocle Magazine. I'm just as cool as they come.
And so the final nugget on this one that I thought was pretty fun was in six fifty three, these invading Arabs sold, like all the rest of these stories, sold the scrap metal, and they sold it to a Jewish merchant who apparently used nine hundred camels to take this stuff away.
Good lord, So how about that?
So nine hundred camels are like just a few camels who had to make nine hundred trips total, You.
Don't know, said nine hundred camels?
This is plus I mean, if this is a Jewish merchant buying the scrap metal of the Colossus of Rhodes. He probably owned nine hundred camels.
Gotcha, you know, and think of all the poop that generated around there. Man, there's a lot of camel poop.
All right, Well, let's take one more break. We'll come back and we'll finish up with the final wonder of the ancient worlds right after this.
Alright, all right, chuck, we're at the last one.
This one's pretty neat too.
I don't think we ever said when the Colossus of Rods was built, did we?
Oh? Jeez, did we not?
So it would have been in the fourth No, the third century, No, the fourth century BCE is when it was built.
Four.
So this this is Remember we've been going chronologically through all of these, and this is then the youngest of the ancient wonders.
Yeah, the little baby of the of the group, the Lighthouse of Alexandria. And you know, I've got a lighthouse thing, sure, uh.
And this one's a pretty great one.
Was This was notable as one of the angers wonders of the ancient world because it was the only one that actually had a practical use and it wasn't just some monument or temple, you know.
Right, it served a purpose. Who was it that said nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful? Or was it just a movie line that I remember?
I think that was John Cusack.
Okay, what nothing useless can ever be beautiful?
Yeah? Man, I wish I could remember what that's from, because I'm sure we're going to get a lot of email about it. But they said in the movie, they say somebody said nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful?
Yeah, I don't buy that.
Yeah, it's an opinion. There's a well put opinion, which is how it ends up in a movie, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, so this one, this one did have utility and it was kind of beautiful too from the artists renderings I've seen. I liked it.
Yeah, pretty pretty sweet lighthouse.
So the Lighthouse at Alexander is supposedly it's got a pretty cool backstory to it. Allegedly, Alexander himself had a dream and in the dream they said, Alexander, you need to go find the Island of Pharaohs. And he said why. They said, it doesn't matter, just do what we say, and he woke up in a cold sweat, and he like trembling, lit a cigarette and he said, I gotta find Pharaohs. And that's how it started.
Yeah, pretty much located off the coast of ancient Egypt. He said, you know what, uh, Ptolemy, since we're ptold me is such a cool name, I'm gonna choose you as one of my generals to go and habit and settle this place. Take care of it for me and told me, he said, I'm all over it.
But you know.
What pharaohs needs though, It needs like an identifier, something that you can see from a long way, something symbolic, something that literally helps you identify it because it's you know, tough navigating around those shores. And Alexander said, well, I don't know if it was Alexander, in my mind it was. He said, how about a lighthouse.
Well, supposedly it was either Ptolemy or the Mausean, which is the predecessor to the museum, which is basically like a brain trust to think tank, an early prototype of the university where the Library Alexandria was housed. Either Ptolemy came up with it or the Mausean came.
Up with them, that's right, And it's a great idea. Put a lighthouse because it serves a function, and it can be tall and grand, and the island will then be known for this right, and it most certainly was.
I have to say. One of the things that I love about these is how some of them are tied together. Like this is the same Ptolemy that the Macedonians were fighting and tried to bring Rhads into roads, had been conquered by King Musulis, and then was later reconquered by Artemesia. Like all of these things kind of fit together, and when you start to learn about one, you learn about the story of the people who built them and how they relate to the stories of people who built other amazing wonders of the ancient world. It's just such a cool history lesson.
Have you seen the new Noah Bomback movie on Netflix. Noy's called The Meerwitz Stories.
No, I haven't seen it.
It's on Netflix. It's funny. It's Adam Sandler, his Adam. The guy's not in the movie, but Adam Sandler neighbor. He references a lot. His name is Ptolemy, so he just keeps saying, well, you know, Ptolemy says this and that without the movie, it's pretty funny and a reminder that Adam Sandler should only play these roles.
Yeah, he definitely well that or the original Billy Madison happy Gilmore role. He was pretty good that too.
Man, he's so good in these kinds of movies.
I know these.
Yeah, so good.
And this character is sort of like a grown up version of that punch drunk love character.
A little bit to me. Good movie.
Check it out.
Yeah, thanks, so, uh it told me?
Which has got a silent p by the way, Yeah, it's a cool name, which is why it's such a great name. It's Potolemy me so Potolemy is on the island. They get this thing built around two eighty five BC. They begin construction. Uh, there's a a dude named Sostrates of Nidos. Sure, and they don't know what part he played other than the fact that it was important. He could have been the architect, could have been the financier, could have been both. Yeah, absolutely could have been both. But he was definitely important to that project.
So supposedly this project they actually have a monetary value for how much it costs. They said it costs eight hundred talents, which is a word for bars of silver, and apparently that's about three million dollars today. This is not bad for this lighthouse. Three million. Oh yeah, not bad at all.
You couldn't build half a lighthouse today for that.
No, no, not one like this. So apparently it was about four hundred and fifty feet tall. And one of the reasons they built this too is not just to put Pharaohs on the map or Alexandria on the map. Alexandria was already like a pretty important city or it was becoming in a important city port city, but having a lighthouse there just helped navigation, which only helped the economy boom. And actually after the lighthouse came into operation, the economy did boom as a result of that.
Right, Yeah, and four hundred and fifty feet is really really tall.
Yeah.
They said that you could see this thing's light from one hundred miles away.
Yeah, I saw the ones that said it was more like thirty or forty still, but yeah, that's a pretty high functioning lighthouse.
One hundred miles away. Is more believable than the Temple of Zeus being struck by a bolt of lightning after it was completed agreed, so you could see this thing thirty miles away. We'll even go with twenty miles away. Okay, I'm not even going above that. And the reason why you could see that is because atop this four hundred and fifty foot structure there was a polished disc of some sort they think it was probably bronze, and during the day they moved it so it would reflect the light of the sun, so you could see it then, and then at night they had of fire going all the time. And there were structures within this amazingly tall structure that were basically what you would call dumb waiters or that type of elevator on pulleys where you could raise and lower get to bring like firewood or animal dried animal dung up to it.
Yeah, and I don't think we said that.
One of the things that makes this so cool to me is it's not just a big cylindrical lighthouse like most of them.
You see.
It is three different levels of three different shapes. So you've got your huge rectangular base, then you have the second level, which is octagonal, and then that third is cylindrical.
So it's just really cool looking.
And apparently you could even up to that first level, which I mean had to be over one hundred feet high in itself. You could bring carts and work horses and stuff all the way up to that level because they had a bunch of storage up there, right, this is pretty cool, and then dumbwaiters to take stuff to the highest hours.
Right, And.
They had like those ramps and like kind of circular or spiral staircases going around it to help to maximize the space that you use to get things up. Yeah, it was very clever structure for sure.
Yeah, it's very cool and you can there are some cool renderings of this online as well.
So this thing was a solid piece of work. Apparently it's it survived as tsunami in three sixty five CE. Oh wow, but what got it? Chuck earthquake? Earthquake yep, and thirteen oh three, so it's.
After like dozens of earthquakes.
Yeah, so it was. It was built around two to eighty BCE. It stood until thirteen hundred thirteen hundred, right, amazing, and finally some earthquakes took it down. And the other thing that happened they reused some of it as a fort which is still around today. But the cool thing about it. In nineteen ninety four, there was an underwater expedition around Pharos and they found what they're almost positive are original blocks from the from the lighthouse itself, original blocks. End. I think statues too, Oh wow, yeah, sculptures, I should say.
Yeah, I did look at some of the underwater pictures. It's pretty cool.
Oh yeah, it's just as cool as it gets. Man, anything that's underwater now that used to be and was meant to be above water, so cool, so creepy. I was reading this really interesting article about the Andrea Doia, you know, the luxury liner family that I think it's sunk in the fifties or early sixties, but it's like this incredible reck site that people dive and they call it like the underwater Everest because if you're an underwater reck diver, that's like, it doesn't get any better than that. Yeah, but you know it's also extremely dangerous. I read this really well written article about I can't remember who wrote it, but to start reading Andrea d'oria article everybody and you'll find the one eventually.
Well, we'll do a podcast on it, how about that.
Okay, let's do it. And that's it. We did the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Finally, huh, that's the last One's that's it, everybody, that's the big one.
That's a Chevy Chase quote, is it? Yeah? From Christmas Vacation when he reveals the pool. Oh right, it's so awkward the way he says it.
It's perfect.
That's it. That's a big one. Well, at any rate, Christmas is coming gone, Chuck. But this is the last episode that we're going to release this year, So I think we should wish everybody a happy New Year. Yeah, Happy New Year everybody. Thanks for sticking with us this twenty seventeen, and we'll see you in twenty eighteen. On a personal note, happy happy birthday to my sweet wife. You me, And we'll see you guys next.
Year, right, I sure hope. So.
So in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
That's right, We're going to finish out this two part with a single listener mail about.
Bath salts.
Appropriately that's why not.
Hey, guys, I'm not wanting to take hard drugs often, but my friend and I were going to an EDM festival and decided to take what we believed was molly. The drugs were crystalline, and we took them orally yuck. The experience did not go as planned. A few days later, we used a drug testing kit on the remaining crystals and find out dunt dun da bath salts. That's scary.
I'll take that. That looks like a drug.
Sure it's crystalline.
Yeah, sure.
Unlike any other party drug that might make you feel ready to dance, this stuff gave my friend and I this sensation that our feet were stuck to the ground by a magnetic force and lifting them was almost impossible. This made dancing very difficult, as all we could do was awkwardly move around with the top.
Half of our bodies.
Additionally, we felt super paranoid that everyone around us was watching us and judging and laughing at our pitiful attempts to dance. By the way, Anonymous, no one noticed you.
I can go ahead and tell you.
That right now, right it was impossible to enjoy the music with my mind racing these unpleasant thoughts, and the feeling lasted for the full day. After the disappointing day, we headed back to the apartment ready to get some rest. Tackle the next day drug free but No, the Basalts would not let us sleep, try as we might. All night long, we lay there wide awake, part of the song turned down for what by DJ Snake layed over and over in my mind for eight hours straight.
This sounds really bad, it does.
My eyes were closed and it felt as though I was watching a show of squiggly neon colored shapes pulsating in rhythm to the incessant music in my mind.
Somehow we managed to.
Get to the festival the next day, but we felt like zombies and we were not even at the cannibalism stage yet.
I'm not sure what that even means.
Well, you know the whole face eating bath Salt's ledgend Oh gotcha. She's like, we weren't even there yet.
Yeah, yeah, still was terrible.
She didn't even get the pleasure of eating someone's face, right, so just from experience all well. Second, when Josh and Chuck said and urged steer clear, that is from Anonymous.
Thanks a lot, Anonymous, appreciate that those the bore you know or No, that's one to grow on.
That's one to grow on.
If you want to send us one to grow on, hit us up. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and as always, joined us at our home on the web but Stuff you Should Know dot com.
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