It is estimated that more than 90 percent of the Grand Canyon's 5 million annual visitors never make it past the park's visitor center and popular South Rim viewing area. The majority of tourists get most of their views of the canyon through their car windows.
Covering more than 134,360 square miles (348,000 sq km), Australia's Great Barrier Reef is larger than England. It is the only living thing on Earth that can be seen from space.
The name "Rio de Janeiro" means "river of January." According to legend, Portuguese explorers chose this name because they first saw Guanabara Bay and its magnificent harbor in the month of January or Janeiro. They may have chosen Rio because they mistook the harbor for the mouth of a river, or used it simply to refer to a large unidentified body of water.
At more than 29,000 feet, the summit of Mount Everest lies just about at the cruising altitude of most jet airliners.
The Earth is not the only planet to host such spectacles as the Northern Lights: Auroras have also been observed in Jupiter's atmosphere.
A volcanic eruption is one of nature's most powerful and deadly phenomena and the birth of Parícutin was no exception. Amazingly, however, no one was killed in the explosions of hot rocks, thick ash and poisonous gas that for nine straight years accompanied Parícutin's violent eruptions. The only fatalities associated with the volcano resulted from lightning strikes during the eruptions.
Although she was their namesake, Great Britain's Queen Victoria never saw Victoria Falls in person.
Contrary to popular belief, Egypt's Great Pyramids were not built by slaves. Scholars now believe that the craftsmen and workers came from all over Egypt to labor on the pyramids and lived nearby in small, pyramid-shaped homes.
In addition to Babylon's hanging gardens, the city's long, colorful brick walls are also included in some versions of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World list.
It is believed that during each ancient Olympic Games, 100 oxen would be slaughtered as an offering to Zeus, the Greek god of thunder, in front of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
Phidias, the ancient Greek sculptor who crafted the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, was also involved in decorating the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, another of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is the only wonder of the ancient world thought to have been commissioned by a woman, Artemisia.
In the poem "The New Colossus" that is inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, Emma Lazarus refers to the Colossus of Rhodes: "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame/With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand/A mighty woman with a torch."
The Greeks called the Lighthouse of Alexandria Pharos. This inspired the French word for lighthouse, phare, and the Italian and Spanish word, faro.
Historians believe there's no truth to the claim that Shah Jahan, who commissioned the Taj Mahal for his favorite wife, cut off the hands of his workers to guarantee they'd never be able to build a similar masterpiece.
The Empire State Building weighs an estimated 356,000 tons and gets struck by lightning approximately 100 times each year.
The ancient city of Petra is the setting for the final scene of the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Some experts have estimated that building Stonehenge would've required 30 million hours of manpower.
Archeologist Hiram Bingham, who rediscovered the ancient city of Machu Picchu in 1911, later went on to become a U.S. senator from Connecticut.
The Great Wall of China is referred to as Wan Li Chang Cheng or the "Wall of 10,000 Li." One li is the equivalent of 500 meters.
Contrary to popular myth, historians believe it's unlikely that Christians were fed to lions at the Colosseum.
