Sunday, June 23, 2013

Jeddah Light

Jeddah Light is an active lighthouse in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. With a height of approximately 436 feet (133 m) it has a credible claim to be the world's tallest lighthouse. It is located at the end of the outer pier on the north side of the entrance to Jeddah Seaport.

LocationJeddah, Saudi Arabia
Coordinates21°28′7.14″N39°8′58.98″E 
Year first constructed1990
Constructionconcrete and steel
Tower shapecylindrical, carrying a spherical building
Markings / patternwhite
Height436 feet (133 m)
Focal height450 feet (140 m)
Range25 nautical miles (46 km; 29 mi)
Characteristicthree white flashes every 20s
Admiralty numberE6054.5
NGA number112-30554
ARLHS numberSAU-003

Ericsson Globe


The Ericsson Globe (originally known as the Stockholm Globe Arena, or in Swedish nicknamed Globen, ’The Globe’) is the national indoor arena of Sweden, located in the Johanneshov district of Stockholm (Stockholm Globe City). The Ericsson Globe is currently the largest hemispherical building in the world and took two and a half years to build. Shaped like a large white ball, it has a diameter of 110 metres (361 feet) and an inner height of 85 metres (279 feet). The volume of the building is 605,000 cubic metres (21,188,800 cubic feet). It has a seating capacity of 16,000 spectators for shows and concerts, and 13,850 for ice hockey.

It represents the Sun in the Sweden Solar System, the world's largest scale model of the Solar System.

On February 2, 2009, the naming rights to the Stockholm Globe Arena were officially acquired by Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson, and it became known as the Ericsson Globe.

The Globe is primarily used for ice hockey, and is the former home arena of AIK, Djurgårdens IF, and Hammarby IF. It opened in 1989 and seats (since 2005) 13,850 for ice hockey games, but is also used for musical performances as well as other sports than ice hockey, for example futsal(indoor football). It is owned by FCA fastigheter. The third team to play a home game in their league was Huddinge IK (three home games there, all in 1993), followed by Hammarby IF (20 home games in The Globen to this day) and AC Camelen (one game in 1998, in the sixth level league, with 92 spectators). The first international game played in Globen was between Hammarby IF (Sweden) and Jokerit (Finland) a couple of weeks before the grand opening, although the players were only 12 years old at the time (born 1977) and it was a friendly game. The arena has been the home of the finals of Sveriges Television's yearly music competition Melodifestivalen since 2002. Ericsson Globe also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2000.

Valle de los Caídos

The Valle de los Caídos ("Valley of the Fallen") is a Catholic basilica and a monumental memorial in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected at Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid, conceived by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to honor and bury those who fell during the Spanish Civil War. It was also claimed by Franco that the monument was meant to be a "national act of atonement" and reconciliation. As a surviving artifact of Franco's rule, the monument and its Catholic basilica remain controversial, particularly because 10% of the construction workforce were convicts, some of them Popular Front political prisoners.

The monument, a landmark of 20th-century Spanish architecture, was designed by Pedro Muguruza and Diego Méndez on a scale to equal, according to Franco, "the grandeur of the monuments of old, which defy time and forgetfulness". Together with the Universidad Laboral de Gijón, it is the most prominent example of the original Spanish Neo-Herrerian style, which was intended as a revival of Juan de Herrera's architecture, exemplified in El Escorial. This uniquely Spanish architecture was widely used in public buildings of post-war Spain and is rooted in International classicism exemplified by Albert Speer or Mussolini's Esposizione Universale Roma.

The monument precinct encloses over 3,360 acres (13.6 km2) of Mediterranean woodlands and granite boulders on the Sierra de Guadarrama hills, over 3,000 feet (910 m) over sea level where stand the Basilica, the Benedictine Abbey, the Hospedería, the Valley and the Juanelos, four cylindrical monoliths dating from the 16th century. The most prominent feature of the monument is the towering 150-metre-high (500 ft) cross erected over a granite outcrop 150 meters over the basilica esplanade and visible from over 20 miles (32 km) away.

Work started in 1940 and took over eighteen years to complete, the monument being officially inaugurated on April 1, 1959. According to the official ledger, the cost of the construction totaled 1.159 billion pesetas, funded through National Lottery draws and donations.

Gerbrandy Tower

The Gerbrandy Tower is used for directional radio services and for FM- and TV-broadcasting. The Gerbrandy Tower consists of a concrete tower with a height of 100 meters on which a guyed aerial mast is mounted. Its total height was originally 382.5 meters, but in 1987 it was reduced to 375 meters.

On August 2nd, 2007 its analog antenna was replaced by a digital one reducing its height by another 9 meters. Its height is now 366.8 meters.

This tower type is a partially guyed tower, which combines a lower free standing tower antennas with an upper guyed mast. If the structure is counted as a tower, it is the tallest tower in Western Europe. The Gerbrandy Tower is not the only tower which consists of a concrete tower on which a guyed mast is set. There is one similar but smaller tower with the same structure in the Netherlands, the radio tower of Zendstation Smilde, which consisted of an 80 meter high concrete tower, on which a 223.5 meter high guyed mast was mounted. This structure collapsed after a fire on July 15th, 2011. Rebuilding of that tower started in late 2011 and is planned to be complete around August 2012; the replacement structure will also be a partially guyed tower.

Kiev TV Tower

The Kiev TV Tower (Ukrainian: Телевізійна вежа, Televiziyna vezha) is a 385 m-high (1,263 ft) lattice steel tower built in 1973 in Kiev, Ukraine, for radio and television broadcasting. It is the tallest freestanding lattice steel construction in the world. The tower is not open to the public.

Construction began in 1968 and finished in 1973 at a cost of approximately $12 million. Made of steel pipe of various diameters and thicknesses, the structure weighs 2,700 tonnes. The central pipe, or core, where the elevator is located, is 4 meters in diameter and made of pipe that is 12 mm thick. It sits on a four-legged base that is about 100 meters tall. Atop the base is an enclosed level which houses microwave transmitting and receiving equipment. At about 200 meters is a second enclosed level that houses television and FM transmitters, as well as a control and maintenance shop. This second level is the elevator's terminus.

The tower is unique in that no mechanical fasteners are used in the structure: every joint, pipe and fixture is attached by welding.

The tower was first designed for Moscow, then the Soviet capital. But Moscow authorities preferred a more "solid" type of tower which was eventually built (Ostankino Tower). Later, when Kiev needed its own tower, the project was reintroduced. The Soviet government ordered the engineers to shorten the tower by almost 30%, so as not to be as tall as the Moscow one.

Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station

The GRES-2 Power Station (or Power Station Ekibastuz) is a coal-fueled power generating station in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan. GRES-2, built in 1987, has installed capacity of 1,000 MWe and has the world's tallest flue gas stack at 419.7 metres (1,377 ft) high. The chimney is about 38 metres (125 ft) taller than the Inco Superstack in Sudbury, Canada. Locals refer to it as "the Cigarette Lighter". This chimney is the tallest chimney ever built.

The power station is the start of the Powerline Ekibastuz–Kokshetau and uses a transmission voltage of 1,150 kV, the highest transmission voltage in the world. The extension of this line to Elektrostal in Russia is also designed for 1,150 kV, but it currently operates at only 400 kV. About 3/4 of the energy produced by GRES-2 is exported to Russia.

Petronas Towers

The Petronas Towers, also known as the Petronas Twin Towers (Malay: Menara Petronas, or Menara Berkembar Petronas) are twin skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to the CTBUH's official definition and ranking, they were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004 until surpassed by Taipei 101, but they remain the tallest twin building in the world. The buildings are the landmark of Kuala Lumpur with nearby Kuala Lumpur Tower.
The towers were designed by Argentine architect César Pelli. They chose a distinctive postmodern style to create a 21st-century icon for Kuala Lumpur. Planning on the Petronas Towers started on 1 January 1992 and included rigorous tests and simulations of wind and structural loads on the design. Seven years of construction followed, beginning on 1 March 1993 with the excavation, which involved moving 500 truckloads of earth every night to dig down 30 metres (98 ft) below the surface.

The next stage was the single largest and longest concrete pour in Malaysian history. 13,200 cubic metres (470,000 cu ft) of concrete was continuously poured through a period of 54 hours for each tower. This record-breaking slab with 104 piles forms the foundation for each tower.

From this floor rose a 21-metre (69 ft) high retaining wall, with a perimeter length of over 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). This concrete shell and the basement area it enclosed required two years to complete, and up to 40 workers on site 24 hours per day.