The exploration for oil in the southern deserts of Libya discovered vast underground resources of water which will be tapped by the Great Manmade River Project. The Great Manmade River Project will enable Libya to reclaim land from the desert with the aim of agricultural self-sufficiency by bringing water from the natural underground supplies in the south. The natural reserves tapped by this civil engineering project will provide water for several hundred years.
The Great Pyramid's sides are aligned almost exactly with true north, south, east, and west, a stunning feat of precision for ancient engineers.
The Wright brothers built their own wind tunnel in 1901 to test hundreds of wing shapes, collecting data that was more accurate than what scientists had at the time.
When no company could build a light enough engine, the Wright brothers' mechanic Charlie Taylor built a 12-horsepower engine for the Wright Flyer in just six weeks.
The Wright brothers controlled their plane using "wing warping," twisting the wingtips to roll left or right, an idea inspired partly by watching birds.
Neither Wilbur nor Orville Wright received a high school diploma, yet they solved one of the biggest engineering challenges in history.
In 2015, Ford switched the F-150's body to military-grade aluminum alloy, cutting up to about 700 pounds to improve fuel economy and capability.
The first Toyota RAV4 used car-like unibody construction rather than a truck's body-on-frame design.
The C8 Corvette, introduced for the 2020 model year, was the first production Corvette with a mid-engine design.
The Porsche 911 has kept its rear-engine layout throughout its history.
The Tesla Model Y shares about 75% of its parts with the Model 3.
The Tesla Model Y uses a heat pump with a component called the Octovalve.
The hardest part of inventing the wheel was the axle, because the wheel and axle had to fit together almost perfectly for the wheel to turn smoothly.
In 1900, engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River to keep sewage out of Lake Michigan, the city's drinking water source.
Blue roses don't exist in nature, but scientists used genetic engineering to create a bluish rose in 2004.
Sadhguru's Inner Engineering is a meditation and wellbeing program.
Sadhguru's 2016 book "Inner Engineering" became a New York Times bestseller.
The Archimedes screw, a device for lifting water, is still used today.
The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937 and had the longest main span of any suspension bridge in the world until 1964.
The Golden Gate Bridge's famous "International Orange" color began as primer, but the architect liked how it blended with the landscape and stood out in fog.
A safety net under the Golden Gate Bridge during construction saved 19 workers, who called themselves the "Halfway to Hell Club."
Engineer Charles Ellis did much of the math for the Golden Gate Bridge but wasn't officially credited until 2007.
Painters work on the Golden Gate Bridge year-round, touching up areas worn by salt air and weather.
The Golden Gate Bridge's two main cables contain about 80,000 miles of wire.
The Golden Gate Bridge is designed to sway up to about 27 feet in strong winds.
About 200,000 people walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on opening day in 1937.
After new railings were installed in 2020, the Golden Gate Bridge started making a humming sound in strong winds.
The Golden Gate Bridge charges tolls only for southbound traffic into San Francisco.
The Panama Canal opened on August 15, 1914.
The Panama Canal uses locks to lift ships about 85 feet up to Gatun Lake and then lower them back down to sea level.
In 1928, adventurer Richard Halliburton swam the length of the Panama Canal and paid a toll of 36 cents based on his weight.
France tried to build the Panama Canal in the 1880s but gave up after thousands of workers died, mostly from diseases like malaria and yellow fever.
US Army doctor William Gorgas led a mosquito control campaign that made building the Panama Canal possible.
The US handed control of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999.
An expansion of the Panama Canal opened in 2016 so it could handle much larger ships.
Because of the shape of Panama, ships going from the Atlantic to the Pacific actually travel southeast.
It takes a ship about 8 to 10 hours to pass through the Panama Canal.
A 2023 drought forced the Panama Canal to limit how many ships could pass through.
The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 828 meters, has been the tallest building in the world since 2010.
The tip of the Burj Khalifa can be seen from about 95 kilometers away.
The Burj Khalifa's Y-shaped design was inspired by a desert flower called the Hymenocallis.
The Burj Khalifa was designed by architect Adrian Smith at the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Tom Cruise climbed the outside of the Burj Khalifa for "Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol."
The Burj Khalifa collects millions of gallons of condensation water each year from its air conditioning, which is used for irrigation.
Visitors can watch the sunset at the base of the Burj Khalifa, then ride the elevator up and see it again.
The Burj Khalifa was originally called Burj Dubai and was renamed after the ruler of Abu Dhabi.
Cleaning all the windows on the Burj Khalifa takes about three to four months.
The Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is being built to be more than a kilometer tall.
The Channel Tunnel between England and France opened in 1994, and its 38-kilometer undersea section is the longest in the world.
British and French tunnel workers broke through to meet each other under the English Channel on December 1, 1990.
A tunnel under the English Channel was first proposed in 1802.
The American Society of Civil Engineers named the Channel Tunnel one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
The Channel Tunnel is actually three tunnels: two for trains and one service tunnel.
Eurostar trains travel from London to Paris in about two and a quarter hours.
Rock dug out of the Channel Tunnel was used to create Samphire Hoe, a nature park in England.
Le Shuttle carries cars through the Channel Tunnel on trains in about 35 minutes.
A Channel Tunnel boring machine was sold on eBay in 2004.
The Channel Tunnel went about 80% over budget.
The International Space Station has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000.
The International Space Station orbits Earth about every 90 minutes, so astronauts see about 16 sunrises a day.
The International Space Station is about the size of a football field.
The International Space Station cost about $150 billion, making it one of the most expensive objects ever built.
The International Space Station can be seen from Earth with the naked eye.
The International Space Station recycles about 98% of its water, including astronauts' urine, into drinking water.
NASA plans to retire the International Space Station and bring it down around 2030.
The International Space Station was built by five space agencies.
The International Space Station travels at about 17,500 miles per hour.
The first piece of the International Space Station, the Zarya module, launched in 1998.
The idea that the Great Wall of China is visible from space with the naked eye is a myth.
Builders of parts of the Great Wall of China used mortar made with sticky rice.
The Great Wall of China became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
The Great Wall of China was built over about 2,000 years.
Most of the Great Wall of China that survives today was built during the Ming dynasty.
Guards on the Great Wall of China sent messages using smoke and fire signals.
Large parts of the Great Wall of China have eroded away.
There is a marathon run on the Great Wall of China.
President Richard Nixon visited the Great Wall of China in 1972.
The Hoover Dam contains enough concrete to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York City.
Without cooling pipes, the Hoover Dam's concrete would have taken about 125 years to cool and harden.
Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam, is the largest reservoir in the US by capacity.
The Hoover Dam sits on the Nevada-Arizona border and has two clocks showing two different time zones.
The Hoover Dam was finished about two years ahead of schedule.
The Hoover Dam is decorated in the Art Deco style.
The Hoover Dam was called Boulder Dam from 1933 to 1947.
A dog that served as the mascot for Hoover Dam workers is buried at the dam.
A bypass bridge next to the Hoover Dam opened in 2010.
The Hoover Dam supplies electricity to about 1.3 million people.
China's Three Gorges Dam is the largest power station in the world by generating capacity.
The Three Gorges Dam displaced about 1.3 million people.
NASA calculated that the water held by the Three Gorges Dam lengthened Earth's day by about 0.06 microseconds.
The Three Gorges Dam is on the Yangtze River.
The Three Gorges Dam has one of the world's largest ship lifts.
The main structure of the Three Gorges Dam was completed in 2006.
Sun Yat-sen proposed a dam on the Yangtze in 1919.
The Three Gorges Dam helps control flooding on the Yangtze.
The Three Gorges Dam has a five-step ship lock.
The reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam is about 600 kilometers long.
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge.
Emily Warren Roebling oversaw much of the Brooklyn Bridge's construction after her husband, the chief engineer, fell ill, and she was the first to cross it.
In 1884, P.T. Barnum led 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge to prove it was safe.
John Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, died of an injury before construction began.
Many Brooklyn Bridge workers got caisson disease, also called the bends.
The Brooklyn Bridge's anchorages once housed wine cellars.
In 2006, workers found a stash of Cold War survival supplies inside the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Selling the Brooklyn Bridge" refers to con artists who pretended to sell the bridge.
The Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened.
The Brooklyn Bridge has an elevated pedestrian walkway.
The Large Hadron Collider is a 27-kilometer ring.
The Large Hadron Collider's magnets are cooled to 1.9 degrees above absolute zero, colder than outer space.
The Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Large Hadron Collider sits underground on the border of France and Switzerland.
Fears that the Large Hadron Collider could create a dangerous black hole were debunked by scientists.
CERN uses a worldwide computing grid to process Large Hadron Collider data.
A magnet failure shut down the Large Hadron Collider shortly after it started in 2008.
Protons in the Large Hadron Collider travel at more than 99.99% of the speed of light.
In 2009, a piece of bread dropped by a bird caused a problem at the Large Hadron Collider.
The Large Hadron Collider cost about $4.75 billion.
The Suez Canal opened in 1869 and has no locks, because the Mediterranean and Red Sea are at nearly the same level.
In March 2021, the giant container ship Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal and blocked it for six days.
The Suez Canal was developed by French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps.
A popular myth says Verdi's opera "Aida" was written for the opening of the Suez Canal.
About 12% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal.
The Suez Canal allowed sea animals to move between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
Egypt expanded the Suez Canal in 2015.
The Suez Canal was closed from 1967 to 1975.
The Suez Canal is about 120 miles long.
Sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi first proposed a giant lighthouse statue for the Suez Canal before designing the Statue of Liberty.
The Transcontinental Railroad was completed when the golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.
The Central Pacific built the Transcontinental Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific built it from the east.
Thousands of Chinese immigrant workers built most of the Central Pacific line.
The Transcontinental Railroad cut a cross-country trip from months to about a week.
A single-word telegraph message, "DONE," announced the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
The golden spike is kept at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center.
On April 28, 1869, Central Pacific workers laid 10 miles of track in a single day.
Railroads created standard time zones in the US in 1883.
Workers blasted tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountains to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act in 1862.
The hardest part of inventing the wheel was the axle, because the axle had to fit the hole in the wheel almost perfectly or the whole thing would wobble and grind.
The Wright brothers' key breakthrough was three-axis control, which let a pilot control pitch, roll, and yaw, and their "wing-warping" system twisted the wings to bank the plane.
A 2023 MIT study found that Roman concrete can partly heal its own cracks, which helps explain why Roman buildings have lasted for thousands of years.
Roman aqueducts carried fresh water into cities over long distances.
The Inca fit stones together without mortar so tightly that their walls survive earthquakes.
Persians built qanats, underground channels that carried water across deserts.
Ancient Persians built yakhchals, dome-shaped structures that stored ice in the desert.
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