It is the one and only Wonder which does not require a description by early historians and poets. It is the one and only Wonder that does not need speculations concerning its appearance, size, and shape.

This is the statue of the god in whose honor the Ancient Olympic games were held. It was located on the land that gave its very name to the Olympics.

Similar to the Great Pyramid, we are now visiting the burial place of an ancient king. Yet the Mausoleum is different - so different from the Pyramid that it earned its reputation - and a spot within the list - for other reasons.

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one had a practical use in addition to its architectural elegance: The Lighthouse of Alexandria. For sailors, it ensured a safe return to the Great Harbor.

Fruits and flowers... Waterfalls... Gardens hanging from the palace terraces... Exotic animals... This is the picture of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in most people's minds.

From its building to its destruction lies a time span of merely 56 years. Yet the colossus earned a place in the famous list of Wonders. "But even lying on the ground, it is a marvel", said Pliny the Elder.

Mount Everest is a rock and snow peak of the Himalayas. It is in Nepal and stands on the border of Tibet. The expedition which first reached the summit, in 1953, was the eighth to make the attempt; there had also been three reconnaissance expeditions.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the Portuguese explorers who sailed down Brazil's coast kept tarck of their discoveries, and the days of the year, by naming the former for the latter.

Spanning more than 2000 km along the northeastern coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is home to thousands of species of plants and animals. The Reef which runs parallel to the Queensland coast has been designated by the Australian Government as a Marine Park.

There are few appropriate superlatives that have not already been applied to this magnificent natural wonder of the world; in many ways it defies description. So vast are the Falls and their setting that it is difficult to grasp their true grandeur and for this reason, they are perhaps best seen from the air.

On the afternoon of February 20, 1943, Dionisio Pulido, a farmer in the Mexican state of Michoacán, was readying his fields for spring sowing when the ground nearby opened in a fissure about 150 fee long.

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is the largest gorge in the world-a 290-mile-long gash across the face of the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona. Rim to rim, it measures up to 18 miles across, with an average width of 10 miles; its average depth is one mile.

The Golden Gate Bridge links San Francisco with Marin County in absolute splendor. The bridge is one of the architectural marvels of the Twentieth Century and a testament to human strife, as it was constructed during the years of the Great Depression.

It is fitting that television, the technological wonder that profoundly changed life in the 20th century, spurred the building of the era's tallest freestanding structure. In the late 1960's, Toronto's soaring skyline began to play havoc with signals from conventional transmission towers.

The Itaipú hydroelectric power plant is the largest development of its kind in operation in the world. Built from 1975 to 1991, in a binational development on the Paraná River, Itaipú represents the efforts and accomplishments of two neighboring countries, Brazil and Paraguay.

On December 20 1994, I travelled from London Waterloo to Paris Gare du Nord by Eurostar train, returning the same day. The journey includes travelling through the Channel Tunnel and over the new French Ligne a Grande Vitesse from the Tunnel to Paris via Lille.

For many, the image out of the Dutch fight against the North Sea rests in the figure of a young boy valiantly saving his town by using a finger to plug a hole in the dike. But this familiar hero is a fictional one, a creation of American author Mary Mapes Dodge in her book, Hans Brinker.

Construction of the Empire State Building began in March of 1930 on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at 350 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. It was completed 14 months later in May, 1931.

The Gateway Mall offers a strip of green space in the heart of Downtown St. Louis. It is used by people from throughout the metropolitan area for rallies, concerts, award ceremonies, festivals, parades, and other special events.

At 1483 feet (452m) tall, the tallest building in the world at the date of its completion, measured to the highest point. However, the Sears Tower in Chicago still has the highest occupied building floor, more than 200 feet higher than the highest occupied floor of the Petronas Towers.

This epic sculpture links the faces of four exalted American presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln. South Dakota's Black Hills provide the back-drop for Mount Rushmore, the world's greatest mountain carving.

The clock's four dials each have a diameter of 23ft, the minute hands are 14ft long and the numerals on each face are nearly 2 feet high. The accuracy of the clock movement is controlled by the placing of old pennies in the mechanism.

The Eiffel Tower was built for the International Exhibition of Paris of 1889 commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII of England, opened the tower. Of the 700 proposals submitted in a design competition, Gustave Eiffel's was unanimously chosen.

Human beings have lived along or near the Colorado River for thousands of years. The evidence for this is the hundreds of habitation sites found throughout the Las Vegas, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam and Lake Mojave area, many of which have been dated with radiocarbon, argon, or by other measures.

Located at the city of Agra in the State of Uttar Pradesh, the Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful masterpieces of architecture in the world. Agra, situated about 200 km south of New Delhi, was the Capital of the Mughals (Moguls), the Muslim Emperors who ruled Northern India between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Angkor Wat, one of the most beautiful and mysterious historical sites in the world. Located over 192 miles to the North-West of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, Angkor has been "protected" from tourism, and the customs and the cultures of the people living there have not changed much.

Easter Island has long been the subject of curiosity and speculation. How and why did its inhabitants carve and transport the massive statues which surround the island? What remains of this culture today, and what lessons can we learn from their legacy?

This is the great temple of Abu Simbel, dedicated to the glory of pharao Ramses II. Though the temple is officially dedicated to the triad Amon-Ra, Ptah and Ra-Harakhte, its front is dominated by four gigantic statues of the great pharaoh himself.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan asked Lee Iacocca, then Chairman of Chrysler Corporation, to head a private sector effort to raise funds for the restoration and preservation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The American people contributed more than $500 million (and counting!) to the repair, restoration, and maintenance of these two great monuments to freedom.

Legend has it that, in 708, the Bishop of Avranche was visited three times in his sleep by the archangel Saint Michael, who implored him to build a sanctuary in his honor on the Mont Tombe, a small, rocky islet near the coast of Normandy.