Selects: How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work, Part II
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Chuck here. Hope everyone's doing well on this lovely Saturday. I gotta say, if you've been sitting around for two weeks wondering what the other seven wonders of the ancient world are, well, that is some serious patience, my friends. So here it is, part two, continuing from two weeks ago, how the seven wonders of the ancient world work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. ♪

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Choke Bryant, and there's guest producer Noel again. And that makes this stuff, you should know, part two. That's right. Did you ever see Hot Shots part two, the sequel? No, you know, I didn't see a lot of those movies at all, except for the airplane movies and the naked gun movies. The Hot Shots movies were worth seeing. Did not see those, did not see any of the scary movies.

Oh, the scary movies? You haven't seen those? Nope. All of them are good. Like, every single one of those are good. Really? Yeah. I did record a movie crush yesterday for the movie Scream, though. Oh, yeah, with who? Nate Bargatze, comedian. Sure. So it was interesting that I had to do Scream research, and that movie changed. Horror movies were on their last legs.

Yes, they were. Not to say that something else might not have come along, but it was Scream that revitalized that genre. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it was kind of a watershed movie. Did we talk about that in the horror movies that changed the genre episode? Jeez, did we? I'm pretty sure we had to have. Boy, if we didn't, we missed out. Well, if we didn't, we probably just said, and obviously Scream. We don't even need to mention that.

Well, it launched the Scream franchise. It launched the Scary Movie franchise in a way. Oh, yeah. And relaunched the genre. Yeah, so Scary Movies worth seeing, Hot Shots is worth seeing. Naked Guns worth seeing. Of course. Although I would put either one of the Hot Shots up against the third Naked Gun any day of the week. That's my bookie. Over the third Naked Gun? Yeah. Okay, that's fair. Yeah.

And then don't get me started on, what was it, like The God Son? The what? The God Son? I don't know what that is. It was like a Godfather spoof that Leslie Nielsen was in with Dom DeLuise. I haven't even seen one. Holy cow. Five minutes of it. I don't even know what that is. You stumped me. Oh, good. Thank you. Well, that's a good start to this episode, don't you think? You're welcome. Thank you.

So, Chuck. Yes. We're moving on. We've already talked about the Great Pyramids at Khufu. We talked about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, right? All three of them, top, top notch. Yeah, and if you don't know what we're talking about now, and this is your first episode of Stuff You Should Know Ever, this is the second of a two-part episode. There you go. On the seven wonders of the ancient world. And here's part two.

And we're going to start with the statue of Zeus at Olympia. You have to say it like that. There's no other way to say it. That's how, who's the guy's name? The boxing guy? That guy. I don't know his name. Yeah. He used to stand at the statue of Zeus and say that on an hourly basis. Yeah. It's pretty amazing stuff.

So this one is one of my favorites, but not my favorite. I promised that my favorite was in here, but this is not quite it. Okay. Although it's close because, you know, this is the main deal here. Olympia, Zeus. This is no run-of-the-mill god in some cast-off city.

No, it was the site of the first Olympics, so it was a pretty important city. Very important. It was nowhere near Mount Olympus, though, curiously, but it was pretty important, right? Yes. This one, to me, is the most ho-hum of them all. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm.

I'm not quite sure why, but I am just kind of like whatever about it. All right. Well, the temple, let's talk about the temple at first. Okay. And also I should warn you that this article has the proportions wildly incorrect. Oh, how tall it was? Yeah. All right. What is it for real? This thing, this article says it was 210 feet tall. That's a 20-story building. Yeah. The temple was not as tall as a 20-story building. It was 68 feet tall.

How did they get it that wrong? I don't know. I just don't know. It's staggering. It's as staggering as this temple would have been had it been 200 feet tall. And it doesn't even say it was somewhere between 68 and 210 feet. Right. It's weird. That's annoying. Everything else is right about it, though. Okay. So it was 68 feet tall. Still pretty impressive. Sure. For the time. Yeah. But I would have to say if somebody, if you were driving through Dunwoody...

If you saw a 68-foot tall temple, you would probably still be impressed even though somebody just built it. So I think it's still impressive even today. Yes. So the temple is fairly impressive. But inside we're talking about the statue mainly the Greek artist Phidias.

was commissioned, and I imagine these artists were paid pretty handsomely for these jobs. - Yeah, because there's only a few of them who were capable of doing this at the time. - Yeah, I mean, there are only a few people in the world who could do this now on something of this scale. So they said, hey, Zeus is the man. We want a statue of Zeus. And he said, yeah, I can knock that out. It's 450 BC, shouldn't take me too long. Eight years later, he was finished.

And he used some really weird materials. So the temple itself, it was like a standard temple, 68 feet tall, like all of them were, a bunch of columns, that kind of thing. But the statue inside is apparently what was the big draw. And one of the reasons why it was something to see was because Phidias used ivory and gold rather than marble, which was pretty...

pretty much what you used to make a statue back at that time. And they think one of the reasons why he used ivory and gold was because he was building a statue to Zeus, right? So it needed to be special. This is like the king of the gods. Yeah, and ivory was definitely something that people would travel to see a statue made of ivory.

Of Zeus. Yeah. So basically, Zeus is sitting down in this statue and he's sitting just straight up. He's not like like, you know, how the Lincoln Lincoln and his memorials kind of chilling in his seat. Zeus is not chilling. He's sitting up ready for action. He's like, what'd you say? What'd you say? Kind of.

The statue itself was about 50 feet high, which is super impressive. Like when you see a rendering of what someone looked like standing at the base of this thing, it's really pretty striking. And one of the things they said about it was that if he stood up, his head would have burst through the roof of the temple. Yeah. Which was probably pretty cool to see, too.

Yeah, because if he was sitting down at 50 feet, he totally would have. Right. He would have just been like, Zeus smash. So he's holding in one hand...

statue of Nike so it's a statue holding a statue and Nike was a wing goddess of victory right yeah so it's kind of like his version of Tinkerbell hanging out in his hand yeah and on the other hand he's holding a scepter which is pretty appropriate for the king of the gods sure and again he's seated on this throne and yeah if you if you look at artists rendering of them we should say here

Most of this stuff, by the time these lists were written, were already aged and then they crumbled over time. So we actually don't know exactly what they looked like. Some people saw them firsthand, but a lot of this information comes from secondhand sources or even further down the chain than that.

So we're not exactly certain of what they looked like. But for most of these, because they were so widely regarded as seven wonders of the ancient world that you have to see, that enough people wrote about them, talked about them, that if you really spent some time, you could put these sources together and come up with probably an accurate description of what it looked like. Yeah, for sure. And the

The remarkable thing about this one is, apparently, was the expression on Zeus' face. Not only is he sitting straight up, ready for action, he just had this look on his face that was kind of intimidating, I guess you could say. You've disappointed me and your mother. That's what it said.

And the legend has it, and I don't buy this at all, but Phidias said that once I'm finished with this thing, he asked for Zeus' blessing on the sculpture, and a bolt of lightning struck the temple at that very moment. Right. I don't believe it. No. No. As a matter of fact, if you do believe that, write in so we can tell you that you're wrong. So there were a couple of issues with this sculpture.

statue. Number one, it was built a couple hundred years, a few hundred years before Christianity began and then started to spread in the area. Once that happened, the worshipers of Zeus, who still remained, said, we need to get this out of here. These Christians, they don't play around. They're going to get rid of this thing, right? And they moved the statue to Constantinople.

And it stayed there safe for a while, actually, apparently housed in a palace. But one of the things about the statue was it was made of gold and ivory, but those things were overlaid on top of a wooden sculpture. Yeah. Which is kind of like, it's pretty slack, Phidias. Maybe you should have stuck with the marble. Maybe. But the palace in Constantinople caught fire. Yeah, that's a problem. Because marble...

doesn't burn, does it? No, it doesn't. Yeah, so it would have survived. But he cheaped out. Let's be honest. Yeah, he phoned this one in. Yeah, and they were right to have moved that thing because the Christians did come in and take care of business, shut down that temple in 391 A.D. But by that time, the statue was gone at least. But yeah, burned in a fire. So earthquakes and fires are taking out all of the wonders.

Earthquakes, fires, and Christians. Yeah. The great levelers. Pretty much. So back in, I think, 1950, this guy, and again, like this stuff just sat in the realm of legend for a long time. Although I think the ruins of the temple itself are still around, aren't they? Yeah.

That I'm not sure. I think they might be. Over the last two days, I've seen so many pictures of ancient temple ruins that I'm like, wait, which one is that? Yeah, it's hard to tell. I think this one may still be around in Olympia, the ruins of the temple. You can still make out a couple of steps leading up to it, that kind of thing. There's the posts of a couple of pillars or whatever. But they found in 1950...

the workshop that Phidias used beside the temple. And apparently were able to recreate using the molds that they found probably what the statue looked like, which is pretty impressive just working from old molds. Yeah, not only that, but these were on coins, right? Oh, yeah, that's right. That's the other one. Yeah, they were on Greek coins. So this isn't one where you really had to guess so much what it looked like because on those coins there's a lot of detail about what it looked like.

And because coins, you know, they were originated there to where they ended up, eventually would give a little indication on how far people had traveled to come see this thing when they carried those coins back. Yeah, it made me wonder, like, were those coins currency or were they like souvenirs? Like if you go to Dollywood or Kennedy Space Center or something like that and get a coin made.

Yeah, I didn't think about that. I wonder. Because, I mean, this was an age where there were tourists and they were already selling the replicas of the Temple of Artemis as tourist mementos. I wonder if these coins were that, too. Yeah. Pretty neat to think about. Ancient tourists. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, I'm going to contemplate that and we'll be back right after this. We'll be right back.

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Okay, Chuck, here's my second favorite. Let's hear it. This isn't your favorite, huh? Are you sure you have a favorite? I do. We're not there yet. Okay, all right. Well, this is my second favorite. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Okay. You don't like this one? It was all right. Mausoleums...

I don't know. You've seen one, you've seen them all. Well, this is the original one. Like, the word mausoleum came from this structure. Yeah, that only goes so far with me. Oh, I love that. The original thing? Yeah, I thought you were like an etymology kind of guy. Oh, I can be. But just not with mausoleum? Yeah, I don't know. There's something about mausoleums that bug me. Because there's dead people interred inside? Or entombed? Yeah, there's just a lot of hubbub for a dead body.

Oh, I see. I see. Yeah, that makes sense. You know? Yeah. I don't want to knock it, though. Well, okay. We'll just stop right here, then. If you're King Mazalus, you deserve to have this named after you. I would say that. Especially if you're married to your sister, and she's madly in love with you, and you've just died. Yeah, that was a little weird. He was the Persian king of Caria, and he was indeed married to his sister, but...

Artemisia? Yeah. And she really, really was in love with her brother and husband. Yep.

And he was, from what I understand, he seemed like a pretty successful ruler. Yeah. They had the mausoleum under construction while he was still alive. And he died before it was finished, obviously. But his sister Artemisia, sister wife Artemisia, was so broken up by it. She said, all right, stop. Stop what you're doing. This is not good enough. This has to be...

the most amazing memorial anyone's ever made to their husband, brother. I've got to get in touch with all of the greatest sculptors of the realm. And she did. She got in touch with at least five of the greatest sculptors alive at the time.

And they were headed by a guy named Pythias, who not only was one of the sculptors, he was the overseeing architect of the entire project. Yeah, so he architected the whole thing. And then she got one sculptor per side to embellish the outside. Scopus, Brexus, Leo Charis.

Olay. And Timotheus. That one's easy. That one is easy. And this one has often been called because she had all these different people working on it. And not only that, but I think for years afterward, it became a place where artists could exhibit and showcase their work. So in the end, this thing ended up being...

I think not as coherent as what you would think something might be when you just hire one person to work on it. For this episode and the last one, I went to the site Unmuseum. Have you ever heard of it? Yeah, I think so. They were very helpful in researching this. And one of the things, the way they put it was that, so during construction, Artemisia died before it was completed.

And the five sculptors who were running the show looked at each other and they're like, let's keep going. We could stop here and leave it unfinished. Artists don't do that, though. Well, no, no, not true ones. It became a temple, a monument, not just to Mausoleus and Artemisia who were entombed inside, but it became a monument to art as well. We can do whatever we want now, guys.

Right, and they did. So they went ahead and they completed it, and it was a pretty impressive structure. Yeah, the structure itself was about 140 feet tall. Is that right? Yeah, I believe so. That's a relief. Yeah. The base was about 100 feet, 24 steps tall. Yeah, and then on either side of the steps, flanking the steps, were crouched lions, which is pretty cool. Uh-huh, it's always cool. Around the outside of the second base,

the second uh tier where you would walk into on all four corners there were um soldiers mounted on horseback sculptures of them protecting the place yeah yeah what else uh pliny the elder said this thing is 440 feet and the perimeter of this thing is 440 feet so it was large 36 columns

It was a big structure, very impressive. I didn't get, from the pictures that I saw of renderings, it didn't look too busy to me. No, I'm not sure. The only place I saw that kind of shade being thrown at it was in this How Stuff Works article. Yeah, I mean, I know that there were different people working on it, but it didn't look like... I expected when I saw it to look like a big mess.

And it did not look like a big mess. No, it looked pretty neat and tidy, right? Yeah. So one of the things that I love about this thing, so again, Artemisia and Mausoleus are entombed inside this thing, but it's also like just a place you would go, you know, take a date or something on a Sunday afternoon in the city of Heliconiasis, Helicarnassus, right? One of the cool things about this is that...

This structure stood for hundreds and hundreds of years after the city of Helicarnassus fell to ruin around it. Yeah.

That is so cool. Just imagining this abandoned, ruined town. And in the middle of it is this 140-foot-tall mausoleum, the world's first mausoleum, with all these ornate sculptures around it. It's just almost completely out of context with the surroundings now that the town has fallen to ruin. Yeah, that is pretty cool for sure. But like all these other ones, earthquakes would eventually take care of business in the 1400s and shake this thing down.

And, again, like a lot of these other stories in 1494, they used the Knights of St. John of Malta, said, hey, let's take all this scrap and use it for our own castle. Yeah, a city as –

When Helicarnassus fell the ruin, another city nearby grew up called Bodrum. And the ruins at Helicarnassus, you would go to Bodrum today to view the ruins of Helicarnassus, the mausoleum, I should say. But the big draw, apparently, is the Knights of St. John's Castle. And to build that castle, some of the scraps that they used were

were from the mausoleum. So you can still see original parts of the mausoleum, but they've been incorporated into the structure of the castle that you would view. Yeah. Which is cool. So it's still around in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, totally. That's very cool. But that earthquake that got it in the 1400s,

it actually had a weird way of preserving some of it, right? Oh, yeah. So there are three big things that keep coming up, right? There is earthquakes that keep happening. There's people using scraps to build other cities nearby. And then there's the British Museum. Those three things figure into the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World big time. Because if there's a piece of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World somewhere in the world outside of its original location...

It's probably in the British Museum. Yeah. And that's the case with a few things from the mausoleum at Helicarnassus. They think that what happened was the earthquake toppled the sculpture of Mausolus and Artemisia riding a chariot pulled by four horses. It was very famous. That was on the top of the mausoleum. That it fell and was covered by rubble so that it was protected properly.

until it was finally excavated in the 19th century when they found a huge old chariot wheel. And then they think the two sculptures of Artemisia and Mausoleus, and now they're all in the British Museum. But they think that earthquake had a weird way of protecting it from being looted and reused by the Knights of St. John later on. Amazing. I'm telling you, that's why it's my second favorite.

well we're coming upon my favorite i wondered if this was it the colossus of rhodes it's a good way to say it too yeah i like this one uh this was ancient greece and this one was the granddaddy of them all statue wise this one was even bigger than the statue of zeus at olympia um third century and rhodes was an island uh still as an island and

Macedonians came knocking on the door and they were angry and they wanted the help of the people of Rhodes because Ptolemy was, Ptolemy I that is, was conquering and they said, we need your help here. And the people of Rhodes said, hey, we're not really, we don't want to get involved in all that. We kind of like it here on the island, living our peaceful lifestyle here. Well, plus if there was anybody they were allied with, it was Ptolemy.

Yeah, but they wanted to stay out of any wars. They just weren't into it. Right. So they rebuffed the Macedonians and they left, but they left behind a bunch of supplies and equipment. I'm not sure why they did that, actually. So this article is so bizarre, man. The Macedonians besieged Rhodes for over a year.

And they had these huge war machines that were made of like bronze and wood and metal. And they would pull these huge machines up to the city walls and like they had catapults on top and they were trying to crush the city for a year. And when the Rhodians finally overcame the Macedonians, they were like, well, we're just leaving this stuff behind. It's too big to move. It didn't work anyway. So we'll leave it. Yeah.

That's why they left it. This article puts it in a really weird way. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So they ended up using, like selling away that stuff, right, to make the money to build, in part, the statue. Yeah, and they reused some of it directly for the statue, too. Right. Like that huge thing that they used to besiege the city, they pulled up to the walls. They actually used that as scaffolding to build the statue with. Heck yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's making plowshares out of, I don't know, guns. So they used the sculptor Charos of Lindos, and he said, I got this one under control. I'm going to use all these different materials, iron, bronze, stone, and this one I'll have wrapped up, oh, in about 12 years. And they said, that's about right. Yeah, that's not bad for what they did here. Yeah, I mean, this thing was 110 feet tall. Yeah, it had a skeleton of iron attached.

And inside the skeleton for structure, it had huge stone columns running through it. And yeah, it was like the actual statue itself was about as big as the Statue of Liberty is today and followed like a pretty similar structure. But like a thousand or so years before, a couple thousand years before. Yeah. People think from written accounts that it was holding a torch like Lady Liberty does and like,

that the face was modeled after Alexander the Great, some say. And here's where it gets interesting to me is if you look up pictures of this thing, you will likely see it standing astraddle the entrance to the harbor. Right. So literally standing there...

Like, kind of with his legs spread, and you would have to sail a ship between his legs to get into the harbor. You shouldn't look up. Yeah, don't look up. Because the detail was really amazing. Very amazing. And 110 feet high? Like, you know what you're going to be staring at. So, there are accounts, and there are plenty of illustrations and other things that support this. And it looks, trust me, if you look it up, it looks very cool. Like,

you know, they were into, uh, they were into making things this tall just because it was so mind blowing. But,

But also they were thanking their patron god, Helios, for sparing them from having to go to war, which is pretty cool. That's one of the reasons I like this one is they were saying like, you know what? We stayed out of war. We managed to remain at peace. We're going to build a monument to our god who we assume helped us out. Yeah, but when they did these things, like with most of these, I love that they were just like, you know.

20-foot-high statue would be great. That's impressive. Like, they would try and build things as large as humanly, literally possible, engineering-wise at the time. I see your point. Yeah, that is pretty neat. So when you look at pictures of this straddling the harbor, it's just like, it's enormous. It's huge. Unfortunately, that's probably not how he stood. Right. That's the downer here, is that they didn't really have the...

the materials or the knowledge or the skill to do something like that. Like the reason that statues back then were basically straight up and down is because you needed those legs to support the rest of the statue. Yeah, and they were atop a pedestal that could hold the weight of the statue above it. Yeah. They would also, if each foot was on either side of the harbor, that's usually not the strongest structure

Solid ground you can find no no way so they wouldn't have had any means of reinforcing the ground beneath it So it would have just sunk or fallen right over yeah Yeah, and plus the other thing too Chuck was that it would have closed the harbor down And they relied on the harbor for their economy Yeah, so it's probably unlikely that it looked as cool as it looks in pictures And what happened to this one 53 years later guess earthquake yep, and

53 years. That is so quick. Yeah, it didn't last long at all. No. So the thing fell. And they think that it probably was located closer to the center of town. Yeah. Somewhere inland. But that when it fell, it crushed a bunch of people's houses and businesses. Yeah. And some of it probably fell into the harbor itself. Yeah.

Uh, that's right. And this one was, uh, notable because I think because it was so young when it fell, it's still, it's not like they were like, oh, let's get rid of this thing. They let it lay there as a tourist attraction in its prone state for many, many years. And people would come far and wide to go visit, uh,

the fallen statue. Yeah, for almost a thousand years. It's crazy. Yeah, it still stayed a tourist attraction. Apparently the cool thing to do was to try to put your arms around the thumb. Yeah, the thumb was bigger than most statues. Right. People couldn't get their arms, they couldn't touch their hands around the thumb. Amazing. And apparently also the arms fell off pretty, they may have even fallen off first during the earthquake. Yeah.

But did you say it broke off at about the knees, just below the knees? No. So those probably stayed for a while. Like from the knee down? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure, which looks a little weird. Like that picture of the person who suffered spontaneous combustion, all that was left was their one leg. I bet it looked kind of like that.

But the stuff that was on the ground, like you could see into like the armholes. And apparently even that was just this breathtaking cavern. It was just such a massive structure. They're like, have you seen in those armholes? Yes, I have. I've seen all the armholes all over the world. I'm the best tourist ever. Have you tried to hug that thumb? I have a subscription to Monocle magazine. I'm just as cool as they come. And so the final nugget on this one that I thought was pretty fun was in 653.

These invading Arabs sold, like all the rest of these stories, sold the scrap metal. They sold it to a Jewish merchant who apparently used 900 camels to take this stuff away. Good Lord. So how about that? So 900 camels are like just a few camels who had to make 900 trips total. I don't know. It said 900 camels. Plus, I mean, if this is a Jewish merchant buying stuff,

scrap metal of the Colossus of Rhodes he probably owned 900 camels. Gotcha. You know. Man think of all the poop that generated around there. Yeah. Man. It's a lot of camel poop. All right well let's take one more break and we'll come back and we'll finish up with the final wonder of the ancient worlds right after this. Hi icons it's Paris Hilton. Check out my new single Chasen featuring Meghan Trainor out today.

I feel so lucky to collaborate with Megan and how perfectly she put my experience into words. Listen to Chasen from my new album, Infinite Icon, on iHeartRadio or wherever you stream music. Don't forget to visit InfiniteIcon.com to pre-save my album. Sponsored by 1111 Media.

In every pair of Tecova's boots, you can expect handmade quality, first-wear comfort, and timeless Western style. Tecova's boots are always made from premium bovine and exotic leathers, and with occasional re-solving, they will last a lifetime. The best way to shop for boots is at your local Tecova's store, where you'll be greeted by the smell of fresh leather and a friendly smile.

Come on in, grab a cold one, get fitted by a pro, and shop the latest dials. Visit Decovas.com. That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com. And don't go gently, y'all. Hey, guys. Rob Parker here to tell you that the national sales event is on at your Toyota dealer.

Making now the perfect time to get the great deal on a dependable new truck like the rugged half-ton Tundra. Combining raw capability with premium comfort and advanced tech to fuel your wildest adventures. Or check out the fully redesigned Tacoma.

Delivering trail-dominating power and captivating style, the new Tacoma was born to make your off-roading dreams come true. Check out more national sales event deals when you visit buyatoyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. Let's go.

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All right, Chuck. We're at the last one. This one's pretty neat, too. I don't think we ever said when the Colossus of Rhodes was built, did we? Oh, geez. Did we not? So it would have been in the fourth, no, the third century AD.

No, the 4th century BCE is when it was built. 294? Mm-hmm. So this is, remember, we've been going chronologically through all of these. And this is then the youngest of the ancient wonders. Yeah, the little baby of the group. Mm-hmm. The lighthouse of Alexandria. And, you know, I've got a lighthouse thing. Sure. And this one's a pretty great one. This was notable as one of the wonders of the ancient world because...

It was the only one that actually had a practical use and it wasn't just some monument or temple, you know? Right. It served a purpose. Who was it that said nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful? Or was it just a movie line that I remember? I think that was John Cusack. Okay. That's it. What? Nothing useless can ever be beautiful? Yeah, man. I wish I could remember what that's from because I'm sure we're going to get a lot of email about it.

But they said in the movie, they say, somebody said nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful. I don't buy that. Yeah, it's an opinion. It's a well-put opinion. It's just how it ends up in a movie. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

So this one did have utility, and it was kind of beautiful, too. From the artist renderings I've seen, I liked it. Yeah, pretty sweet lighthouse. So the lighthouse at Alexandria, supposedly, it's got a pretty cool backstory to it. Allegedly, Alexander himself...

had a dream and in the dream they said alexander you need to go find the island of pharos and he said why they said it doesn't matter just do what we say and he woke up in a cold sweat and he's like trembling lit a cigarette and he said i gotta find pharos and that's how it started

Yeah, pretty much. Located off the coast of ancient Egypt. He said, you know what, Ptolemy –

Since Ptolemy is such a cool name, I'm going to choose you as one of my generals to go inhabit and settle this place, take care of it for me. And Ptolemy said, I'm all over it. Aye-aye. Aye-aye. You know what Pharos needs, though? It needs, like, an identifier, something that you can see from a long way, something symbolic, something that literally helps you identify it.

because it's tough navigating around the shores. And Alexander said, well, I don't know if it was Alexander. In my mind, it was. He said, how about a lighthouse? Well, supposedly it was either Ptolemy or the Mausianian.

which is the predecessor to the museum, which is basically like a brain trust, a think tank, an early prototype of the university where the Library of Alexandria was housed. Either Ptolemy came up with it or the Mauseon came up with it. That's right. And it's a great idea. Put a lighthouse because it serves a function.

And it can be tall and grand, and the island will then be known for this. Right. And it most certainly was. I have to say, one of the things that I love about these is how some of them are tied together. Like, this is the same Ptolemy that the Macedonians were fighting and tried to bring Rhodes into. Rhodes had been conquered by King Mausolus.

and then was later reconquered by Artemisia. All of these things kind of fit together. And when you start to learn about one, you learn about the story of the people who built them and how they relate to the stories of people who built other amazing wonders of the ancient world. It's just such a cool history lesson. Have you seen the new Noah Baumbach movie on Netflix? No. Yeah, it's called The Meyerowitz Stories. No, I haven't seen it. It's on Netflix. It's funny. It's Adam Sandler.

The guy's not in the movie, but Adam Sandler's neighbor, he references a lot. His name is Ptolemy. Oh, yeah. So he just keeps saying, well, you know, Ptolemy says this and that. It's pretty funny. And a reminder that Adam Sandler should only play these roles.

Yeah, he definitely, well, that or the original Billy Madison Happy Gilmore role. He was pretty good at that, too. Oh, man, he's so good in these kinds of movies. I know. Punch Drunk Love? I didn't just do these. Yeah. So good. And this character is sort of like a grown-up version of that Punch Drunk Love character a little bit to me. Good movie. Check it out. I'll check it out. Yeah, thanks. So it's Holomy, which has got a silent P, by the way.

Yeah, it's a cool name. Which is why it's such a great name. It's Ptolemy. Ptolemy. So Ptolemy is on the island. They get this thing built around 285 BC. They begin construction.

There's a dude named Sostratis of Nidos. Sure. And they don't know what part he played other than the fact that it was important. He could have been the architect, could have been the financier. Could have been both. Yeah, absolutely could have been both. But he was definitely important to that project. So supposedly this project, they actually have a monetary value for how much it costs. They said it costs...

800 talents, which is a word for bars of silver. And apparently that's about $3 million today, which is not bad for this lighthouse. $3 million? Oh, yeah. Not bad at all. You couldn't build half a lighthouse today for that. No. No, not one like this. No, no. So apparently it was about 450 feet tall.

And one of the reasons they built this, too, was not just to put Pharos on the map or Alexandria on the map. Alexandria was already like a pretty important city or is becoming an important city, port city. But having a lighthouse there just helped navigation, which only helped the economy boom. And actually, after the lighthouse came into operation, the economy did boom as a result of that. Right.

Yeah, and 450 feet is really, really tall. Yeah, they said that you could see this thing's light from 100 miles away. Yeah, I saw the ones that said it was more like 30 or 40. Still. But yeah, that's a pretty high-functioning lighthouse. 100 miles away is more believable than the Temple of Zeus being struck by a bolt of lightning after it was completed. Agreed. So you could see this thing...

30 miles away. We'll even go with 20 miles away, okay? I'm not even going above that. And the reason why you could see that is because atop this 450-foot structure, there was a polished disk of some sort. They think it was probably bronze. Yeah.

And during the day, they moved it so it would reflect the light of the sun. So you could see it then. And then at night, they had a fire going all the time. And there were structures within this amazingly tall structure that were basically what you would call dumb waders or that type of elevator on pulleys where you could raise and lower to bring like firewood or dried animal dung up to it.

Yeah, and I don't think we said that one of the things that makes this so cool to me is it's not just a big cylindrical lighthouse like most of them you see. It is three different levels of three different shapes. So you've got your huge rectangular base. Then you have the second level, which is octagonal. And then that third is cylindrical. So it's just really cool looking. And apparently you could even up to that first level, which, I mean, had to be.

Over a hundred feet high in itself you could bring carts and workhorses and stuff all the way up to that level because they had a bunch of storage up there right and

This is pretty cool. And then dumbwaiters to take stuff to the highest towers. Right. And they had like those ramps and like kind of circular or spiral staircases going around it to help to maximize the space that you use to get things up. Yeah. It was very clever structure for sure. Yeah, it's very cool. And you can... There are some cool renderings of this online as well. So this thing was...

a solid piece of work. Apparently it survived a tsunami in 365 CE. Oh, wow. But what got it, Chuck?

Earthquake? Earthquake. Yep. In 1303. And this is after like dozens of earthquakes. Yeah. So it was built around 280 BCE. It stood until 1300. Yeah. 1300, right? That's amazing. And finally some earthquakes took it down. And the other thing that happened, they reused some of it as a fort, which is still around today. Yeah.

But the cool thing about it is in 1994, there was an underwater expedition around Pharos, and they found what they're almost positive are original blocks from the lighthouse itself. Original blocks and, I think, statues, too. Oh, wow. Yeah, sculptures, I should say. Yeah, I did look at some of the underwater pictures. It's pretty cool. Oh, yeah, it's just as cool as it gets, man. Anything that's underwater now that used to be and was meant to be above water...

It's so cool. So creepy. I was reading this really interesting article about the Andrea Doria, you know, the luxury liner for Italy that I think it sunk in the 50s or early 60s. But it's like this incredible wreck site that people dive and they call it like the underwater Everest. Because if you're an underwater wreck diver, that's like, it doesn't look like it.

It doesn't get any better than that. Yeah. But, you know, it's also extremely dangerous. And I read this really well-written article about it. I can't remember who wrote it. But just start reading Andrea Doria articles, everybody, and you'll find the one eventually. Well, we'll do a podcast on it. How about that? Okay. Let's do it.

And that's it. We did the seven wonders of the ancient world finally, huh? That's the last one. That's it, everybody. That's the big one. That's a Chevy Chase quote. Is it? Yeah, from Christmas Vacation when he reveals the pool. Oh, right. It's so awkward the way he says it. It's perfect. That's it. That's the big one. Well, at any rate, Christmas has come and gone, Chuck, but this is the last episode that we're going to release this year.

So I think we should wish everybody a happy new year. Yeah. Happy new year, everybody. Thanks for sticking with us this 2017. We'll see you in 2018. On a personal note, happy, happy birthday to my sweet wife, Yumi. And we'll see you guys next year, right? I sure hope so. So in the meantime, it's time for Listener Mail. That's right. We're going to finish out this two-parter with a single Listener Mail.

About... uh... bath salts. Appropriately. Because why not? Yeah. "Hey guys, I'm not one to take hard drugs often, but my friend and I were going to an EDM festival and decided to take what we believed was moly. The drugs were crystalline and we took them orally. Yuck. The experience did not go as planned. A few days later, we used a drug testing kit on the remaining crystals and found out... dun dun dun... bath salts." That's scary.

I'll take that. That looks like a drug. Sure. It's crystalline. Yeah, sure. Uh, unlike any other party drug that might make you feel ready to dance, this stuff gave my friend and I the sensation that our feet were stuck to the ground by a magnetic force and lifting them was almost impossible. This made dancing very difficult as all we could do was awkwardly move around, uh, with the top half of our bodies. Additionally, we felt super paranoid that everyone around us was watching us and judging and laughing at our pitiful attempts to dance. Uh,

By the way, Anonymous, no one noticed you. I can go ahead and tell you that right now. Right. It was impossible to enjoy the music with my mind racing. These unpleasant thoughts and the feeling lasted for the full day. After the disappointing day, we headed back to the apartment, ready to get some rest, tackle the next day drug-free. But no, the bath salts would not let us sleep. Try as we might, all night long, we laid there wide awake. Part of the song, Turn Down For What, by DJ Snake, played over and over in my mind for eight hours straight.

This sounds really bad. It does. My eyes were closed and it felt as though I was watching a show of squiggly neon colored shapes pulsating in rhythm to the incessant music in my mind. Somehow we managed to get to the festival the next day, but we felt like zombies and we were not even at the cannibalism stage yet.

I'm not sure what that even means. Well, you know, the whole face-eating bath salts legend. Oh, gotcha. She's like, we weren't even there yet. Yeah, yeah. It still was terrible. She didn't even get the pleasure of eating someone's face. Right. So just from experience, I will second what Josh and Chuck said and urged. Steer clear. That is from Anonymous. Thanks a lot, Anonymous. Appreciate that. That is the more you know. Or no, that's one to grow on. That's one to grow on. If you want to send us one to grow on, hit us up.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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