4. Great Wall of China
Located in Northern China, the Great Wall measures more than 5,500 miles, of which the actual wall is around 3,900 miles, the rest being made up of trenches and natural barriers like rivers and hills. Construction on the wall was started as early as the 5th century BC as a way of protecting different areas from invasions and raids. Over the years, following dynasties made changes to the wall, either repairing or expanding it. But the most important dyansty in the wall’s history was the Ming Dynasty, which, starting with the 16th century, rebuilt most of the wall using more advanced techniques and materials such as bricks and stone, most of the parts visible today dating from this period.
Unfortunately, the only sections in good shape are the ones from tourist areas, because a large part of the wall is in extremely bad shape: due to erosion from sandstorms hundreds of miles of the wall disappeared or its height was severely reduced from 16 feet to less than 6 feet, while large parts were taken down for the stone or to make room for other buildings
For many years, the Great Wall of China was considered to be the only man-made structure visible from space but recent research and reports from astronauts reported that this is completely false. While advanced cameras are able to photograph it from low Earth orbit, the human eye can’t see the wall, even from low orbit 7.7 times better than normal visual acuity being required.
How to get to the Great Wall of China: Being such a long structure, the Great Wall of China can be visited from many location, one-day trips being easy to find in Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin, Liaoning, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Gansu.
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