Seven Wonders of the World
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Seven Wonders of the World. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a term applied by the Greeks in the time of Alexander to the pyramids of Egypt, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the statue of Jupiter at Athens, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria. See separate articles. Seven Years' War. In European history, a general struggle lasting from 1756 to 1763. Maria Theresa , desiring to recover Silesia from Frederick the Great of Prussia, formed an alliance of Austria, Russia, France, and most of the German states. Frederick was supported by England and four of his small German neighbors. Elizabeth, empress of Russia, died. Her successor, Peter III, was an admirer of Frederick. He withdrew from the alliance of the Austrian empress and joined Prussia. Frederick not only retained his holdings, but enlarged his territory. The war extended to the New World, where it was known as the French and Indian War. In America it was a struggle between the French and English for colonial supremacy. The war was decided on the Plains of Abraham. France lost Canada. The American colonies spent $20,000,000 in the conquest. The British government refunded $5,500,000, and voted another million dollars, but a part was withheld on account of American misconduct, the same that ripened into the War of the American Revolution. See Maria Theresa ; Frederick Ii; Wolfe ; Quebec , etc.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis at Babylon, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Statue of Jupiter at Athens by Phidias, the Mausoleum, the Colossus at Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria. cycle of seven wonders originated This among the Greeks after the time of Alex- Great, and they were described ander the in a special work by Philo of Byzantium.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both lists place Phidias's statue of Jupiter "at Athens"; it in fact stood in the temple at Olympia, and modern accounts always say so. Collier's credits the canonical list to Philo of Byzantium in 1921, but the surviving treatise on the seven wonders is now generally assigned to a much later writer than the third-century BC engineer of that name. Archaeology has since touched two of the vanished six: divers off Alexandria from 1994 recovered massive blocks and statuary from the Pharos site, while the Hanging Gardens remain unlocated, prompting the serious modern suggestion that they belonged to Sennacherib's Nineveh rather than Babylon. The Greek list is now rivalled by the "New Seven Wonders" chosen by a global internet poll in 2007, which put the Great Wall, Petra, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal and Rio's Christ the Redeemer alongside the pyramids as the only ancient survivor.
Written for this edition, 2026.