Sagrada Família is a large Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. Although incomplete, the church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in November 2010 was consecrated and proclaimed a minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI.
Though construction of Sagrada Família had commenced in 1882, Gaudí became involved in 1883, taking over the project and transforming it with his architectural and engineering style—combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms. Gaudí devoted his last years to the project, and at the time of his death at age 73 in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was complete. Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly, as it relied on private donations and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War—only to resume intermittent progress in the 1950s.
Construction passed the halfway point in 2010 with some of the project's greatest challenges remaining and an anticipated completion date of 2026; the centennial of Gaudí's death. The basílica has a long history of dividing the citizens of Barcelona; over the initial possibility it might compete with Barcelona's cathedral, over Gaudí's design itself, over the possibility that work after Gaudí's death disregarded his design, and the recent possibility that an underground tunnel of Spain's high-speed rail link to France could disturb it's stability.
Describing Sagrada Família, art critic Rainer Zerbst said "it is probably impossible to find a church building anything like it in the entire history of art" and Paul Goldberger called it "the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages.
The Simpsons is more than just a mindless sitcom. Through their run, they have managed to weave in a number of deeper subjects. Perhaps one of the more interesting subjects is one that they didn't have the time to work in.
A recurring theme in The Simpsons is that Bart has a strange relationship with Krusty the Clown. Bart's character is almost a pure anarchist, except for his strange idolization of Krusty the clown. He idolizes him despite all of Krusty's very obvious problem.
Show creator Matt Groening said that they wanted to take that one step further. Krusty was originally Homer in disguise. Both characters look pretty similar. The idea was that Homer couldn't get any respect from his son, except when he dressed as a clown.
They thought it was too complicated of a storyline, so they dropped it, and Krusty became a character on his own. The thematic thread got picked up later, though, when Homer joins Krusts' clown college in the sixth season.
If you’ve ever seen ancient Greek statues, you may wonder about the size of men’s penises back then. If the statues are accurate, ancient Greek men were not well endowed. Are these true representations though and if so, are they true of all ancient Greek men?
While today, men would prefer to have a large penis. This was not the case in ancient Greece. Experts have actually studied ancient Greek genitalia extensively. Back then, in highbrow culture, large penises were actually considered grotesque, comic or both. The Greeks actually desired small, thin penises. Hence, this ideal small representation on their statues.
Lego are incredibly strong. A BBC program called More or Less asked Open University's engineering department to find out how many Lego bricks it would take staked on top of each other to destroy the bottom brick.
They used a hydraulic testing machine and they determined that the maximum force that a 2x2 Lego brick can take is 4,240 newtons. Since those 2x2 Lego bricks have a mass of 1.152 grams, it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse. That would be a stack 3,591 meters (11,781ft) high!
Learn more about Lego at the source.
A terrier-cross in Louisiana called Max holds the record for being the world's oldest known living dog. Born in August 1983, Max has been a part of Janelle Derouen's family ever since.
Max has also enjoyed fine health into his older years. As of a few years ago, he only had mild arthritis and some cataracts. The owner says that he never spoiled the dog, and never even fed him any food from their table.
Using the rule of thumb for translating dog years into human years; in August, he will have lived for 210 human years. Here's to hoping he gets to live many more years.
