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Showing posts from May, 2017

The Forbidden City, Beijing

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The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty(1420 to 1912). Located in heart of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. It served as the home of emperors and their households as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government for almost 500 years.Constructed from 1406 to 1420. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. Ancient Chinese people displayed their very considerable skills in building it. Take the grand red city wall for example. It has an 8.6 meters wide base reducing to 6.66 meters wide at the top. The angular shape of the wall totally frustrates attempts to climb it. The bricks were made from white lime and glutinous rice while the cement is made from glutinous rice and egg whites. These incredible materials make the wall extraordinarily strong. Since yellow is

The Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque)

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The Blue Mosque is a historic mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. The mosque is known as the Blue Mosque because of blue tiles surrounding the walls of interior design. The Blue Mosque continues to function as a mosque today; men still kneel in prayer on the mosque's lush red carpet after the call to prayer. Also known as The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, was constructed between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. It contains Ahmed's tomb, a madrasah and a hospice. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes. It sits next to the Hagia Sophia, another popular tourist site. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has also become a popular tourist attraction in Istanbul. Following the Peace of Zsitvatorok and the crushing loss in the 1603–1618 war with Persia, Sultan Ahmet I, decided to build a large mosque in Istanbul to reassert Ottoman power. It wou

Great Pyramids of Giza

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The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact. Originally, the Great Pyramid was covered by casing stones that formed a smooth outer surface; what is seen today is the underlying core structure. Some of the casing stones that once covered the structure can still be seen around the base. There have been varying scientific and alternative theories about the Great Pyramid's construction techniques. Most accepted construction hypotheses are based on the idea that it was built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. The lowest chamber is cut into the bedrock upon which the pyramid was built and was unfinished. The so-called Queen's Chamber and King's Chamber are higher up withi

Mole National Park

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Mole National Park is located  in northwest Ghana  and it is the largest  most frequently visited  wildlife refuge in Ghana. It is  situated in the heart of the pristine Guinea Savannah Woodland ecosystem with low hills and escarpments.  This area of Ghana receives over 1000 mm per year of  rainfall . A long-term study has been done on Mole National Park to understand the impact of human hunters on the animals in the preserve.  The park's lands were set aside as a wildlife refuge in 1958. In 1971 the small human population of the area was relocated and the lands were designated a national park. The park is an important water catchment area with smaller water streams and other rivers with smaller water streams and other rivers pouring their water in the White Volta. Kparia and polzen are among popular rivers in the park which have developed into a spectacular waterfall downstream. There is an estimate of about 742 species of plants and trees in the park of which 4 are endemi