When it comes to man-made structures, we’re always trying to go bigger and better, with the results being buildings that are massive in every aspect. However, man has been putting structures together since the beginning of time, and we’ll also touch on some of the impressive structures that were made hundreds of years ago without the use of technology or state-of-the-art equipment.

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8 - Worth a visit…

Atlanta is a great place to go if you’re keen to pay a visit to the world’s largest aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium received a cash injection of $250 million from Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot. The Aquarium is home to 100,000 sea life, and opened in November of 2005. The Aquarium has more than a million cubic feet of water, and there’s a 6.3-million-gallon tank that houses whale sharks! There are 5 separate galleries at the Aquarium, including the Georgia Explorer, Tropical Diver, Ocean Voyager, Cold Water Quest and the River Scout. To name but a few of the sea creatures you can find there: sharks, whales, penguins, seahorses, electric eels and otters.

7 - A former number 1…

The KVLY-TV Television Mast is not a structure that many know about, but it used to be the tallest man-made structure in the world back in 1963 when it was built. It lost that accolade in 1974 when the Warsaw radio mast was built. It stands at an incredible 2,063 feet tall and it was built in 33-days with just 11 men! The wind at the top can reach speeds of up to 70 mph and if you’re feeling brave enough, you can take a 2-man elevator up the tower till you reach 1,950-feet… the rest, I’m afraid you’ll have to climb. Currently it’s the 4th tallest tower in the world, and it’s the tallest radio mast in the world, as the Warsaw radio tower collapsed in 1991.

6 - And we have lift off…
Does an airplane count as a man-made structure? We’ll say it does, because this is too astounding not to include somewhere! The Antonov An-225 Mriya was designed in the 1980’s by the Soviet Union’s Antonov Design Bureau. This cargo aircraft is the longest and heaviest plane to ever be built and could carry a weight of 640 tons at takeoff. The task of this monster plane was to transport the Buran spaceplane. Only one was ever built, and it’s still flying today, carrying extremely heavy loads to wherever they need to go.

5 - While we’re on aircraft…
Let’s quickly look at another mode of transportation built by man in 1962. The BHPB Iron Ore train broke the world record on the 21st of June, 2001, for being the heaviest and the longest train to ever move, and it stretched an impressive 4.6 miles. The number of cars on this train was a record-breaking 682 carrying 82,000 tons of ore, and it was one driver that managed to move them all successfully. Hopefully you never come across one of these beasts at a railway crossing!

4 - Let’s make it an extra-large…

All our previous entries are miniature in comparison to the largest man-made objects in the world! They are submarine communications cables. These monsters stretch from San Francisco to Japan and San Francisco to New Zealand. 99% of international data is communicated through these wires! They span 5,000 miles and are usually 2.5 inches in diameter and weigh roughly 22-pounds per meter. Each cable weighs around 176 million pounds. In 2014 there were 285 cables lying at the bottom of the ocean.

3 - Loud and Clear…
This is officially the largest European Acoustic Facility in the world, with sounds so loud they could actually kill you! Think of it as a giant sound system. When space ships are launched, I’m sure you never considered that the sounds could actually damage the craft, so this machine has been built to test whether the satellites or spacecraft can withstand the noise levels. Nitrogen fuels the giant system to produce sounds that are just slightly quieter than an explosion. This incredible device was built in 1989 and is inside a 900-foot square room which stands 50-feet tall, big enough to hang pieces of rockets and satellites for testing.

2 - Making the impossible, possible…

We take in another ancient site that you have to marvel at how man managed to make the steadfast and imposing structure. Jetavanaramaya, located in Sri Lanka, was built sometime between 273 and 301 AD. The structure stood at 400-feet! This used to be the largest stupa in the ancient world. A stupa is a hemispherical structure that contains relics and is used for meditation. This particular stupa had a base area of 2,508,000 square feet, basically the same as 43 football fields, and was built with 93.3 million baked bricks! The stupa had housed over 10,000 monks when it was active. The original building was sadly destroyed at one point, but during the 12th century a much smaller stupa was built, measuring just 232 feet in height.

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