South-central Manitoba.
Year: 2024
Colossal Building Complex in the Muslim Holy City of Mecca
The Abraj Al-Bait Towers, also known as the Mecca Royal Hotel Clock Tower, is a building complex in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project that strives to modernize the holy city in catering to the pilgrims. The complex holds several world records, the tallest clock tower in the world, the world’s largest clock face and the building with the world’s largest floor area. The complex’s hotel tower became the second tallest building in the world in 2012, surpassing Taiwan’s Taipei 101 and surpassed only by Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. The building complex is metres away from the world’s largest mosque and Islam’s most sacred site, the Masjid al Haram. The developer and contractor of the complex is the Saudi Binladin Group, the Kingdom’s largest construction company.
The tallest tower in the complex stands as the tallest building in Saudi Arabia, with a height of 601 metres (1,972 feet). Currently it is the second tallest building in the world, surpassing Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan. The structure has surpassed Dubai International Airport in having the largest floor area of any structure in the world with 1,500,000 m2 (16,150,000 sq ft) of floorspace.
The site of the complex is located across the street to the south from an entrance to the Masjid al Haram mosque, which houses the Kaaba. To accommodate worshipers visiting the Kaaba, the Abraj Al-Bait Towers has a large prayer room capable of holding more than 10,000 people. The tallest tower in the complex also contains a five-star hotel, operated by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, to help provide lodging for the millions of pilgrims that travel to Mecca annually to participate in the Hajj.
In addition, the Abraj Al-Bait Towers has a 20 story shopping mall (the Abraj Al Bait Mall) and a parking garage capable of holding over a thousand vehicles. Residential towers house permanent residents while two heliports and a conference center are to accommodate business travelers. In total, up to 100,000 people could be housed inside the towers. The project uses clock faces for each side of the hotel tower. The highest residential floor stands at 450 metres (1,480 feet), just below the spires. The clock faces are 43 m × 43 m (141 ft × 141 ft), the largest in the world. The roof of the clocks is 530 metres (1,740 feet) above the ground, making them the world’s most elevated architectural clocks. A 71-metre-tall spire (233 ft) has been added on top of the clock giving it a total height of 601 metres (1,972 feet), which makes it the second tallest building in the world, surpassing Taipei 101 in Taiwan. The tower also includes an Islamic Museum and a Lunar Observation Center which will also be used to sight the moon during the Holy Months.
Those Arabs operate in strange ways. They claim to be the most spiritual and religious people to ever grace the face of the earth. Yet they build a 20 story shopping mall and 4 star hotel right next to their most sacred shrine. Ostentatious materialism juxtaposed by religious devotion?
Either way you look at it, this is one amazing gigantic structure.
It’s all about the ingredients in the concrete
Two structures, one ancient and one very modern, that used super-strength concrete.
The Pantheon is a building in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier building commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). The present building was completed by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated about 126 AD. He retained Agrippa’s original inscription, which has confused its date of construction.
The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon’s dome is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).
The 4,535 metric tons (4,999 short tons) weight of the Roman concrete dome is concentrated on a ring of voussoirs 9.1 metres (30 ft) in diameter that form the oculus, while the downward thrust of the dome is carried by eight barrel vaults in the 6.4 metres (21 ft) thick drum wall into eight piers. The thickness of the dome varies from 6.4 metres (21 ft) at the base of the dome to 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) around the oculus. The materials used in the concrete of the dome also varies. At its thickest point, the aggregate is travertine, then terracotta tiles, then at the very top, tufa and pumice, both porous light stones. At the very top, where the dome would be at its weakest and vulnerable to collapse, the oculus actually lightens the load.
No tensile test results are available on the concrete used in the Pantheon; however, Cowan discussed tests on ancient concrete from Roman ruins in Libya, which gave a compressive strength of 20 MPa (2,900 psi). An empirical relationship gives a tensile strength of 1.47 MPa (213 psi) for this specimen. Finite element analysis of the structure by Mark and Hutchison found a maximum tensile stress of only 128 kPa (18.5 psi) at the point where the dome joins the raised outer wall.
The stresses in the dome were found to be substantially reduced by the use of successively less dense aggregate stones, such as small pots or pieces of pumice, in higher layers of the dome. Mark and Hutchison estimated that, if normal weight concrete had been used throughout, the stresses in the arch would have been some 80% greater. Hidden chambers engineered within the rotunda form a sophisticated structural system. This reduced the weight of the roof, as did the elimination of the apex by means of the oculus.
One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower, 1 World Trade Center, One WTC and 1 WTC) is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the fourth-tallest in the world. The supertall structure has the same name as the North Tower of the original World Trade Center, which was completely destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The new skyscraper stands on the northwest corner of the 16-acre (6.5 ha) World Trade Center site, on the site of the original 6 World Trade Center. The building is bounded by West Street to the west, Vesey Street to the north, Fulton Street to the south, and Washington Street to the east.
In early 2010, Eastern Concrete Materials, a U.S. Concrete company, began producing high-strength concrete for One World Trade Center (WTC). Within three years, the New York City-based producer had supplied 150,000 cubic yards of ready-mix for the tower’s superstructure—with a concrete strength that has never been used on such a scale in building construction. Collavino Construction Co. then pumped this mix as high as 103 stories.
Construction began in 2006 and was completed in 2014. Its supporting columns are made of steel and concrete ranging in strength from 8600 psi to 14,000 psi. Columns on the first 40 floors are made from 12,000-14,000-psi concrete and the upper floors with 8,600–10,000-psi mix designs.
The ready-mixed concrete was pumped by Collavino’s crews to the highest elevation to which concrete has ever been pumped in the Americas. Because the mix design was so workable, pumping was accomplished with a single pump that moved the concrete directly from the ground to the top story, instead of to an intermediate station where it would have been remixed before being transferred to a second pump.
The Trump World Tower, the tallest all-residential building in the world when completed in 2001 and the tallest in New York until the 76-story Beekman Tower, engineered by WSP Cantor Seinuk, brought another technological marvel to New York: “super” cement. The super or high-strength concrete is produced by blending fly ash, slag cement and silica fume with concrete. Super high-strength concrete cannot be produced with only concrete.
Typically, the high-strength concrete used in skyscraper cores (in the 1990’s) would have a compressive strength of 8,000 to 10,000 pounds per square inch (psi). Because Trump World Tower is a rather slender high-rise, WSP Cantor Seinuk specified concrete compressive strength of 12,000psi for the first time in New York City.
“On One World Trade Center WSP Cantor Seinuk’s engineers worked on specifying the compressive strength and modulus of elasticity,” says Marcus. “But we needed even higher compressive strength—14,000 psi—for the taller One World Trade building.”
View from the top
Most of the concrete has gone into the tower’s monolithic pedestal. From a footprint of 200-by-200 feet, it rises up for 70 feet. Above ground, this has specially reinforced concrete to defend the building from the blast of a street-level bomb. Below grade, the reinforced-concrete structure is engineered to protect the tower’s structural integrity from a bomb even bigger than the one that exploded in 1993 in the World Trade Center’s parking garage.
Kids from around the World with their favourite Toys
By Kaushik
Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti is always traveling the world in search of adventure, good stories, and interesting people. For his latest project entitled “Toy Stories”, Galimberti photographed children from around the world with their most prized possesion. He did not expect to uncover much we did not already know. “At their age, they are pretty all much the same,” is his conclusion after 18 months working on the project. “They just want to play.”
But it’s how they play that seemed to differ from country to country. Galimberti found that children in richer countries were more possessive with their toys. “At the beginning, they wouldn’t want me to touch their toys, and I would need more time before they would let me play with them,” says the Italian photographer. “In poor countries, it was much easier. Even if they only had two or three toys, they didn’t really care. In Africa, the kids would mostly play with their friends outside.”
However, there are many similarities in which the kids regard their toys, especially when it comes to their function. Galimberti met a six-year-old boy in Texas and a four-year-old girl in Malawi who both maintained their plastic dinosaurs would protect them from the dangers that await them at night. More common was how the toys reflected the world each child was born into – the girl from an affluent Mumbai family loves Monopoly, because she likes the idea of building houses and hotels, while the boy from rural Mexico loves trucks, because he sees them rumbling through his village to the nearby sugar plantation every day. A Lativian kid plays with miniature cars because his mother drove a taxi, while the daughter of an Italian farmer has an assortment of plastic rakes, hoes and spades.
Working for Toy Stories, Galimberti learned as much about the parents as he learned about the children. Parents from the Middle East and Asia, he found, would push their children to be photographed even if they were initially nervous or upset, while South American parents were “really relaxed, and said I could do whatever I wanted as long as their child didn’t mind”.
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Watcharapom – Bangkok, Thailand
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Stella – Montecchio, Italy
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Ralf – Riga, Latvia
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Botlhe – Maun, Botswana
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Orly – Brownsville, Texas
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Noel – Dallas, Texas
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Maudy – Kalulushi, Zambia
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Li Yi Chen – Shenyang, China
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Chiwa – Mchinji, Malawi
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Davide – La Valletta, Malta
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Cun Zi Yi – Chongqing, China
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Arafa & Aisha – Bububu, Zanzibar
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Tyra – Stockholm, Sweden
Dome concepts for Winnipeg
As a hopefully beautiful summer approaches Winnipeg , the citizens realize the dark, cold, windy, snow covered hell frozen over reality of an impending winter will be here in five months .
Winters in Winnipeg are usually long and dry with occasional blasts of bitterly cold weather from the northwest. Out of Canada’s 100 largest cities, Winnipeg’s winter is the tenth coldest with an average low of −20.2 °C (−4.4 °F). The snow cover season lasts 132 days; usually from November till March, sometimes earlier or later. From December through February the maximum daily temperature exceeds 0 °C (32 °F), on average, for only 10 days and the minimum daily temperature falls below −20 °C (−4 °F) on 49 days. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Winnipeg was −47.8 °C (−54 °F), on 24 December 1879 and the coldest since then was −45 °C (−49 °F) on 18 February 1966. Within the past twenty years, the temperature has dipped below −40.0 °C (−40 °F) once on 5 February 2007 as well as both 29 and 30 January 2004. On 1 February 1996 the temperature was −41.8 °C (−43.2 °F) however, the wind chill was -57.1, making this the coldest windchill in the city’s history.
But let us think ahead. If the funding and technology could coalesce, what about a dome, or domes for the city? That way the citizens could sit outside on their decks, mow the lawn and never have to plug in the car year round. The city’s snow removal budget would be non-existent, that extra revenue could be applied to the dome payments. Outdoor swimming pools could stay open all the time, drive-in restaurants could sell ice cream for 12 months and cyclists could inflame the tempers of drivers all bloody year! It would be sensational!
If the city, provincial and federal governments could each provide 10 billion dollars, and the elite prosperous entrepreneurs combined with the business oligarchs of Winnipeg provide another 10 billion, voila, the project rockets skyward. Lets do it!
Downtown Winnipeg in January
Notice a second dome in the background protecting St. Boniface
The Osborne Village area during a polar vortex in February
Sensational! Go canoeing on the Assiniboine River while a Siberian Polar Front invades western Canada, and Edmontonians are freezing their backsides, ha!
The Golden Boy atop the Legislative building would not have to endure blistering ice pellets that rain down from the frozen ionosphere.
What seems like unattainable dreams can come true, we just have to believe and stay with the dream. Persist, never say die! The dream also needs a gold mine to be discovered underneath downtown Winnipeg.
You can take the Canadian out of the country, but you can’t take Hockey out of the Canadian
Canadian soldiers playing hockey on a rink they built in Korea, 1952
Canadians’ enthusiasm for hockey was in evidence during the Korean War, in which 27,000 Canadian troops participated in defense of freedom.
The winter of 1952 was bone-chilling enough for the Imjingang River to freeze over, a river in northern Gyeonggi-do Province that flows down and across the middle of the Korean Peninsula. At the time, the peninsula was still at war, as the Korean War had broken out in late June 1950.
Among the U.N. forces defending the South Korean side against the North were many Canadian soldiers. They were stationed along the western front abutting the Imjingang River and they were on their guard against any intrusion from the north. A biting wind howled across the riverside, however, and almost froze the gun-toting soldiers as well as the river. The winter weather turned the river itself into a great field of ice. Even amid the tense situation, with battle happening at any time, the young soldiers felt the urge to take part in their traditional winter sport: ice hockey.
They couldn’t suppress their desire for the sport, so at last members of two Canadian battalions: the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) and the Royal 22nd Regiment (R22R) turned the frozen river into an ice rink for a hockey match. The glacial winter air didn’t stop the soldiers’ passion for their sport. The match took place “in the sound of the heavy guns of nearby U.S. Army artillery”, just a short distance from the front lines of the struggle against Communist forces, recalled Korean War veteran Vince Courtenay.
Although the exact origins of ice hockey are much disputed, ice hockey is thought to have first developed in the 19th century in Canada. Scholars agree that the rules for ice hockey were first codified at McGill University in Montreal, in 1879. Since then, Canada has been synonymous with the sport.
During this game, the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s won 4-2 against the 1st Battalion of the Royal 22e Regiment.
Brigadier John Rockingham drops the puck for a match between 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (left) and 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Regiment “Vandoos” (right) during the Korean War. Playing for the Patricias was Private W. Wolfe. For the Royal 22e Regiment, Private R. Halley.
Many of these troops were surprised to find in Korea a climate not much different from that which they had left in Canada, with cold winters meaning frozen rivers where they could play their favorite sport.
The matches took place “in the sound of the heavy guns of nearby U.S. Army artillery,” just a short distance from the front lines of the struggle against Communist forces, said Korean War veteran Vince Courtenay.
It would have been a startling sight for enemy soldiers from the hills above the Imjin River in the winters of 1952 and 1953 — Canadians fighting for the puck on shimmering ice between deadly battles for precious terrain on the Korean Peninsula at the height of the Cold War conflict.
Ancient Aliens: The Reptilians
The Reptilian alien is a fixture of science-fiction, from H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of Valusians to the Cardassians in Star Trek, to the Visitors of the television series V. But could ancient myths about reptilian creatures provide evidence that they are more than just a pop-culture creation? Legends of serpent beings can be found on every continent. The Bible, the Quran and the ancient texts known as the Nag Hammadi codices all describe reptilian entities interacting with humans. In Central and South America people worship the feathered serpent god called Kulkukan or Quetzalcoatl. In India, the Nagas are half-human half-reptile gods who live underground in a place called Patala. And in China and Japan, many emperors claim to be the descendants of dragons. Could these stories represent real Reptilian beings that people all over the world actually encountered in the ancient past?
The Ancient Aliens hair guy is quite unaware of what is going to hit him.
Let the Human – Reptilian battle begin:
‘Yeti’ Among Finalists for New NHL Team Name
The NHL may soon have a rather sizeable cryptozoological presence on the ice as ‘Yeti’ has emerged as a possible name of a forthcoming franchise based in Utah. Team owners Smith Entertainment Group announced on Thursday that the proverbial abominable moniker was among the six finalists alongside the Utah Hockey Club, Mammoth, Outlaws, Blizzard, and Venom. For those who would like to see the legendary beast of the Himalayas come to the NHL, they can help make it happen as the ultimate decision on the new team’s name has been left up to the public with an online vote that ends on June 20th. Should ‘Yeti’ come out on top, it will actually be the second NHL team to be named after a cryptid as the Seattle franchise adopted the moniker ‘Kraken’ back in 2020.
Lily Munster – Irresistible Beauty
Lily Munster, Countess of Shroudshire (née Dracula), is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom, The Munsters, originally played by Yvonne De Carlo. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is a vampire.
Lily was born in 1827 to Sam Dracula (Grandpa) and his 166th wife (referred to only as “Grandma”). She lived with Grandpa for some time in Transylvania (a region in Romania) before meeting Herman Munster and marrying him in 1865. She, Grandpa, and Herman moved to America sometime before the mid-1940s and adopted her sister’s child, Marilyn. In the mid-1950s, she gave birth to Eddie, her and Herman’s only child.
Her name is presumably derived from the tradition of the lily as a flower of death, or a vague reference to Lilith, a female demon of Jewish mythology.
Lily is the matriarch of the Munster family. She is very close with her niece, Marilyn. She has a werewolf for a brother, who appears in one episode, and a sister who is mentioned a few times who is Marilyn’s mother. Lily is the voice of reason in the Munster household, often relied upon to set problems right, and typically mediates when Herman and Grandpa squabble.
Lily and Herman
Lily also has a fiery temper. While she is deeply in love with Herman (“Pussycat,” as she calls him), she also frequently gets very angry at him (due to his frequent stupidity and occasional selfishness), and Herman often meekly discloses his fear (to others) of being on the receiving end of her wrath. She also has reprimanded her own father (Grandpa) on several occasions for his own foolish actions and stubborn self-righteousness.
Lily is a beautiful and slender woman who appears to be in her middle age years, although she is actually hundreds of years old. A white streak in her hair recalls the monster’s mate from Bride of Frankenstein. Lily usually dresses in an ankle-length pale pink gown that appears faded and old, and she sometimes also wears a scarf. Her necklace features a bat-shaped medallion. When away from the Munster house, she sometimes wears a long silver cape with a hood. In the episode “Munsters Masquerade”, Lily demonstrates the ability to float in the air while dancing.
Gothic Underwear
Herman loves it
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