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Our world is full of wonders great and small, ancient and

contemporary, natural and man-made. Here are 15 modern
marvels that fill us with awe through the sheer scale,
beauty, backbreaking effort and inspiration that brought
them into creation
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t 12 stories high, Henderson
Waves is Singapore's tallest
pedestrian bridge. It snakes
across Henderson Road,
connecting Mount Faber Park
and Telok Blangah Hill Park.
The bridge, which opened in
2008, is made of seven
undulating curved steel ribs that
alternately rise over and under its
deck. The curved ribs form alcoves
that function as shelters with
seats within.
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ðot afraid of heights? Check out the
view from the Ledge at Willis Tower,
formerly Sears Tower, in Chicago. The
five-sided balconies, which opened in
2009, are suspended 1,353 feet in the air
and jut out 4 feet from the building's
103rd floor Skydeck. They're actually
more like boxes than balconies, with
transparent walls, floor and ceiling.
Visitors can see unobstructed views of
Chicago from the building's west side,
and a heart-stopping vista of the street
and Chicago River below ³ if they're
brave enough to look straight down.
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Palm Jumeirah is an artificial island, the
first and smallest of the three Palm
Islands created off the coast of Dubai,
United
rab Emirates. The palm-tree
shaped island is so large that it can be
seen from the International Space
Station. It is currently home to luxury
homes and the megaresort
tlantis, The
Palm, and will eventually tout many
other deluxe hotels. In the years since
construction began in 2001, this island
effectively has doubled the length of
Dubai·s coastline.
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The Hualapai tribe of
rizona
commissioned this horseshoe-
shaped, glass walkway that
opened above the Grand Canyon
in 2007. The Skywalk juts off the
rim of a side canyon 4,000 feet
above the Colorado River.
Despite the vertigo-inducing
views, the glass bridge reportedly
is very sturdy ³ it can support
more than 71,000 pounds and can
withstand gusts of wind over 100
mph.
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The Channel, as the 31.35-mile
tunnel under the English Channel
is known, opened in 1994,
connecting Calais, France, with
Folkestone, England. It is the
second-longest tunnel in the
world (behind Japan·s Seikan
railway tunnel), and has the
longest underwater section of any
tunnel. The Eurotunnel Shuttle is
a special vehicle transport train
that has the largest rail cars in
the world.
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Located in China·s Hubei Province, this
largest hydroelectric power station in the
world contains a 375-mile-long reservoir
within its impressive 7,661-foot concrete
bulk. The scale of the controversial
project is so huge that it has displaced
millions of people, submerged hundreds
of cultural sites in the Three Gorges area
and precipitated an untold amount of
damage on the regional environment.
Construction began in 1994, but the
dam is not expected to become fully
operational until 2011.
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One of the most difficult engineering
endeavors ever attempted, the Panama
Canal is a 50.72-mile-long passage
between the
tlantic and Pacific oceans
that was begun by France in 1880 but
completed by the U.S. in 1914. It
drastically reduced shipping distances
between ðew York and San Francisco,
from 14,000 miles around Cape Horn to
6,000 when passing through the canal.
During the
merican construction
phase, 211 million cubic yards of dirt
and rock were scraped away over 10
years to finish the canal.
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lso known as the Pearl Bridge,
this structure spans the strait
between the islands of Honshu
and
waji in Japan. Upon its
opening in 1998, the Pearl Bridge
became the longest suspension
bridge in the world, with a center
span measuring 6,532 feet in
length ³ making it a full
quarter-mile longer than the
previous record-holder. The entire
three-span bridge is more than
12,000 feet long.
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The Boeing 787 Dreamliner took off on
its long-awaited first flight on Dec. 15,
2009. The Dreamliner is the first
commercial airplane that·s mostly built
from carbon-reinforced plastic. This
composite material is light and strong
and won·t corrode or be susceptible to
metal fatigue. Using this kind of
construction also reduces both the
financial and environmental costs of
building a new plane. The first
Dreamliner is expected to be delivered to

ll ðippon
irways in late 2010.
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Visiting Las Vegas? Consider a side trip
to Hoover Dam. It spans the Colorado
River between
rizona and ðevada,
about 30 miles southeast of Sin City.
The massive dam, built between 1931
and 1936, is 726.4 feet deep, from
foundation rock to the roadway on the
crest of the dam. Hoover Dam generates,
on average, about 4 billion kilowatt-
hours of hydroelectric power each year
for use in ðevada,
rizona and
California ³ enough to serve 1.3
million people.
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Orbiting Earth with a resident crew
since ðovember 2000, the International
Space Station is accessible only to
enterprising tourists who have bank
accounts flush enough to afford
approximately $25 million for the round-
trip ticket offered by Space
dventures.
To date, six space tourists have boarded
the ISS to experience days of zero
gravity orbiting the planet. However,
that number is sure to rise in coming
decades as private companies develop
commercial spacecraft and programs to
make the final frontier a viable travel
destination.
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This 750-foot tall skyscraper in ðew
York City, which opened in 2003,
consists of two towers bridged by an
atrium containing upscale retail shops.
It was the first major building to be
completed in ðew York City after the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This
´city in a buildingµ contains the offices
of Time Warner Inc., residential
condominiums, and the Mandarin
Oriental, ðew York hotel.
nderson
Cooper 360° broadcasts live here from
Cðð Studios, and you·ll also find the
1,200-seat Jazz at Lincoln Center.
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The Millau Viaduct in southern
France, which opened in 2004, is
the tallest vehicular bridge in the
world, with a roadway nearly
900 feet in the air. The cable-
stayed design gives the bridge the
appearance of a row of sailboats
at sea, and the masts rise 1,125
feet ³ higher than the Eiffel
Tower.
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Royal Caribbean·s Oasis of the

Seas made its debut in 2009 as
the world·s largest cruise ship.
It·s nearly five times the gross
tonnage of the Titanic and 1 1/2
times longer than the U.S.
Capitol building, has 16 decks
and a capacity for 6,296 guests.
The ship offers weeklong sailings
in the eastern and western
Caribbean. Cruises depart from
Port Everglades in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla.
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Dubai, United
rab Emirates, opened the
world·s tallest skyscraper in January, 2010,
and superlatives have poured in ever since. If
you stuck the Eiffel Tower on top of the
Empire State Building, you still wouldn·t
have a structure as tall as the Burj Khalifa.
It rises 2,717 feet from the desert and
provides views of the Persian Gulf, the sail-
shaped Burj al-
rab hotel and the man-made
Palm Jumeirah island. Originally named
Burj Dubai, the building was renamed in
honor of Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed
l
ðahyan, the ruler of
bu Dhabi, which
pumped tens of billions of dollars into Dubai
in 2009 as it struggled to pay enormous
debts.