That's annoying. I went to wikipedia to prove the Orient Express answer was wrong, ended up surfing Wikipedia for 10 minutes and missed filling in the last answer, which I know like the back of my hand. And the answer is not wrong, because despite the city not being called Constantinople for 500 years, that was what was written on the destination boards and the advertising posters, at least when the service started.
Not really. Stone or masonry construction means that the base of the building must grow almost exponentially with height in order to support additional weight. Just being tall does not a skyscraper make. Steel framework does. This is the architectural distinction, not the presence of elevators or height above a minimum, or a certain number of occupied floors.
Liverpool, St Louis, and Philadelphia are also in contention for being home to the first skyscraper, depending on what precise definition you use. But I guess pkerr is the expert...
Shibam in Yemen is a small sea of midrises several hundred years old. Bologna, Italy had very tall single family towers in the medieval age 100, 200 and even 300 feet high. Some still remain, but nowhere near what were there in the heyday. They could build cathedrals that are bafflingly tender in support, but didn't have the building materials or know how for lasting skyscrapers - the surviving crop tend to lean like the tower in Pisa, another contender.
Yeah, I guess it's possible to pick a definition for skyscraper that would make Iraq or Egypt home to the earliest ones.. but... those would be some pretty odd definitions.
Like I said, if you go looking for an exact and technical definition of skyscraper, let's say you find 20 different definitions.
15-16 of those definitions are going to point to various buildings in New York City as being the oldest ones.
2-4 would point to buildings in Chicago.
1-2 definitions you found would point to Philadelphia, St Louis, Liverpool, Paris, Ulm, Bologna, or some other place.
The large majority of definitions give the title to New York.
I'm wondering why you don't accept just "Liberty" for the second clue. You already give the "statue" part, seems redondant to have to type it again. And you do accept only "Eiffel" for the next clue... (Also, this quiz is too Eiffel-centric! I mean, two clues in a row are about his work. ;)
Just a heads up, the Ned Kelly question says "County" not "Country". Turns out Australia doesn't even have counties, which I did know when I was trying to make up Australian-sounding county names to guess at that answer
ˈskīˌskrāpər/
noun
1.
a very tall building of many stories.
Like I said, if you go looking for an exact and technical definition of skyscraper, let's say you find 20 different definitions.
15-16 of those definitions are going to point to various buildings in New York City as being the oldest ones.
2-4 would point to buildings in Chicago.
1-2 definitions you found would point to Philadelphia, St Louis, Liverpool, Paris, Ulm, Bologna, or some other place.
The large majority of definitions give the title to New York.