Expanding The PANAMA CANAL - Greatest ever Construction

In 2006, Panamanians approved a referendum to expand the Panama Canal, doubling its capacity and allowing far larger ships to transit the 100-year-old waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific. Work began in 2007 to raise the capacity of Gatun Lake and build two new sets of locks, which would accommodate ships carrying up to 14,000 containers of freight, tripling the size limit. Sixteen massive steel gates, weighing an average of 3,100 tons each, were built in Italy and shipped to Panama to be installed in the new locks. Eight years and $5.2 billion later, the expansion project is nearing completion. The initial stages of flooding the canals have begun and the projected opening date has been set for April of 2016.

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FALKIRK WHEEL

The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift in Scotland. It connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. Named after the nearby town of Falkirk in central Scotland, the lift opened in 2002. The two canals it serves were previously connected by a series of 11 locks, but by the 1930s these had fallen into disuse. The locks were filled in and the land built upon. The plan to regenerate central Scotland's canals to reconnect Glasgow with Edinburgh was led by British Waterways with support and funding from seven local authorities, the Scottish Enterprise Network, the European Regional Development Fund, and the Millennium Commission. Planners decided early on to create a dramatic 21st-century landmark structure to reconnect the canals, instead of simply recreating the historic lock flight. Designs were submitted for a boat lift to link the canals; the Falkirk Wheel-design...

Second longest cable stayed bridge in North America-Port Mann Bridge

The widest bridge in the world (until the Bay Bridge's east span recently opened), the bridge east of Vancouver, B.C., which opened in 2012, remains the second-longest bridge in North America. The cable-stay bridge uses an impressive 288 cables to reach a total bridge length of 6,866 feet. The Port Mann Bridge is a 10-lane cable-stayed bridge that opened to traffic in 2012. It is currently the second longest cable-stayed bridge in North America and was the widest bridge in the world until the opening of the new Bay Bridge in California . The new bridge replaced a steel arch bridge that spanned the Fraser River , connecting Coquitlam to Surrey in British Columbia near Vancouver . The old bridge consisted of three spans with an orthotropic deck carrying five lanes of Trans-Canada Highway traffic, with approach spans of three steel plate girders and ...

7 Lesser Known facts of BURJ KHALIFA

1. It is said that the weight of concrete used to build the skyscraper is equivalent to 100,000 elephants and the steel used to construct the frame is equal to that of 5 Airbus 380 aircrafts. 2. The building design takes after the Greek flower, Hymenocallis. The name is translated as Beautiful Membrane in Greek. 3. Burj Khalifa was built at a cost of $1.5 billion, It is supplied with about 250,000 gallons of water daily, and its electricity needs can go up to 360,000 100-watt bulbs burning at once. 4. During the peak of construction, atleast 12,000 workers worked on the construction site per day. 5. The tip of the sphere of Burj Khalifa can be seen from 95 kilometers away. 6. Burj Khalifa has 54 elevators which have a speed of up to 40 miles per hour. 7. The tower was to be called Burj Dubai but this was changed at the last minute to honor Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi for bailing out Dubai's bankrupt sovereign wealth fund with...

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