The New 7 Wonders of the World was a campaign started in 2001 to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments. [1] The popularity poll via free web-based voting and telephone voting was led by Canadian-Swiss Bernard Weber and organized by the New 7 Wonders Foundation (N7W) based in Zurich, Switzerland, with winners announced on 7 July 2007 at Estádio da Luz in Lisbon. [2] [3] [4] [5] The poll was considered unscientific partly because it was possible for people to cast multiple votes. [6] According to John Zogby, founder and current President/CEO of the Utica, New York–based polling organization Zogby International, New 7 Wonders Foundation drove "the largest poll on record". [4]
The program drew a wide range of official reactions. Some countries touted their finalist and tried to get more votes cast for it, while others downplayed or criticized the contest. [4] [6] After supporting the New 7 Wonders Foundation at the beginning of the campaign by providing advice on nominee selection, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), bound by its bylaws to record and give equal status to all World Heritage Sites, distanced itself from the undertaking in 2001 and again in 2007. [7] [8]
The 7 winners were chosen from 21 candidates, which had been whittled down from 77 choices by a panel in 2006.
The New 7 Wonders Foundation, established in 2001, relied on private donations and the sale of broadcast rights and received no public funding. [9] After the final announcement, New 7 Wonders said it did not earn anything from the exercise and barely recovered its investment. [10] Although N7W describes itself as a not-for-profit organization, the company behind it—the New Open World Corporation (NOWC)—is a commercial business. All licensing and sponsorship money is paid to NOWC.
The foundation ran two subsequent programs: New 7 Wonders of Nature, the subject of voting until 2011, and New7Wonders Cities, which ended in 2014.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, largest and oldest of the three pyramids at the Giza Necropolis in Egypt and the only surviving of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was granted honorary status. [11]
Wonder | Location | Image | Year |
---|---|---|---|
Giza Pyramids (honorary status) | Giza Necropolis, Egypt | 2560 BC | |
Great Wall of China | China | 700 BC | |
Petra | Ma'an, Jordan | 312 BC | |
Colosseum | Rome, Italy | 80 AD | |
Chichén Itzá | Yucatán, Mexico | 600 AD | |
Machu Picchu | Cuzco Region, Peru | 1450 AD | |
Taj Mahal | Agra, India | 1643 AD | |
Christ the Redeemer | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | 1931 AD |
In 2007, the New 7 Wonders Foundation contracted a partnership with the United Nations in recognition of the efforts to promote the UN's Millennium Development Goals. [12] [ failed verification ]
However, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in a press release on June 20, 2007, reaffirmed that it has no link with the initiative. The press release concluded: [8]
There is no comparison between Mr. Weber's mediatized campaign and the scientific and educational work resulting from the inscription of sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The list of the 8 New Won cannot, in any significant and sustainable manner, contribute to the preservation of sites elected by this public.
— UNESCO
In Brazil there was a campaign Vote no Cristo (Vote for the Christ) which had the support of private companies, namely telecommunications operators that stopped charging voters to make telephone calls and SMS messages to vote. [13] Additionally, leading corporate sponsors including Banco Bradesco and Rede Globo spent millions of reals in the effort to have the statue voted into the top seven. [4] Newsweek reports the campaign was so pervasive that: [4]
One morning in June, Rio de Janeiro residents awoke to a beeping text message on their cell phones: "Press 4916 and vote for Christ. It's free!" The same pitch had been popping up all over the city since late January—flashing across an electronic screen every time city-dwellers swiped their transit cards on city buses and echoing on TV infomercials that featured a reality-show celebrity posing next to the city's trademark Christ the Redeemer statue.
— Elizabeth Dwoskin, Newsweek
According to an article in Newsweek, around 10 million Brazilians had voted in the contest by early July. [4] This number is estimated as the New 7 Wonders Foundation never released such details about the campaign. An airplane message, with a huge inscription "4916 VOTE FOR CHRIST" flew in Rio de Janeiro for a month.
An intensive campaign led by the Peruvian Ministry of Commerce and Tourism in Peru had a great impact in the media and consequently, Peruvian people voted massively for its national wonder. The announcement of the new World Wonders generated great expectations and the election of Machu Picchu was celebrated nationwide.
The Chilean representative for Easter Island's Moais, Alberto Hortus, said Weber gave him a letter saying that the Moais had finished eighth and were morally one of the New 7 Wonders. Hortus said he was the only participant to receive such an apology. [14]
A campaign to publicize the Taj Mahal in India gathered speed and it reached a climax in July 2007 with news channels, radio stations, and many celebrities asking people to vote for the Taj Mahal.
Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan joined the campaign to back Petra, Jordan's national treasure. [4]
There was a campaign on the news programs to encourage people to vote for Chichen Itzá.[ citation needed ]
The other 13 finalists, [15] chronologically were:
Wonder | Location | Image | Year |
---|---|---|---|
Stonehenge | Amesbury, United Kingdom | 2400 BC | |
Acropolis of Athens | Athens, Greece | 447 BC | |
Hagia Sophia | Istanbul, Turkey | 537 AD | |
Angkor Wat | Angkor, Cambodia | 1113 AD | |
Moai Statues | Easter Island, Chile | 1250 AD | |
Timbuktu | Timbuktu, Mali | 1327 AD | |
Alhambra | Granada, Spain | 1333 AD | |
Kremlin and Red Square | Moscow, Russia | 1561 AD | |
Kiyomizu-dera | Kyoto, Japan | 1633 AD | |
Neuschwanstein | Füssen, Germany | 1869 AD | |
Statue of Liberty | New York City, United States | 1886 AD | |
Eiffel Tower | Paris, France | 1887 AD | |
Sydney Opera House | Sydney, Australia | 1973 AD |
The Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was commissioned in 1631 by the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall.
John J. Zogby is an American public opinion pollster, author, and public speaker. He is founder of the Zogby poll, the Zogby International poll, and he serves as a senior partner at John Zogby Strategies, a marketing and political consulting firm created in 2016 with two of his sons, Benjamin and Jeremy. Zogby has written weekly articles for Forbes, and he has contributed to a weekly ongoing presidential report card since the beginning of the Obama administration.
Scientific, nationwide public opinion polls conducted relating to the 2008 United States presidential election include:
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James Joseph Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based organization that serves as a political and policy research arm of the Arab-American community.
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This article lists statewide public opinion polls conducted relating to the 2008 Republican Party presidential primaries, typically using standard statistical methodology.
This is a collection of scientific, public nationwide opinion polls that have been conducted relating to the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates.
Nationwide public opinion polls conducted relating to the 2008 Republican presidential candidates, typically using standard statistical methodology, include the following. The public was generally sampled by land-line telephone only, and sometimes asked only about their opinion of certain candidates.
New 7 Wonders of Nature (2007–2011) was an initiative started in 2007 to create a list of seven natural wonders chosen by people through a global poll. It was the second in a series of Internet-based polls led by Swiss-born Canadian Bernard Weber and organized by the New 7 Wonders Foundation, a Swiss-based foundation which Weber founded. The initiative followed an earlier New 7 Wonders of the World campaign, and attracted 100 million votes from around the world before voting finished on November 11, 2011.
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The Seven Wonders of Ukraine are seven historical and cultural monuments of Ukraine, which were chosen in the Seven Wonders of Ukraine contest held in July, 2007. This was the first public contest of that kind which was followed by the Seven Natural Wonders of Ukraine, the Seven Wonderful Routes of Ukraine, and the Seven Wonderful Castles of Ukraine. All nominated sites are publicly owned protected areas of at least regional level, available for tourism.
This article is a collection of statewide public opinion polls that have been conducted relating to the January Democratic presidential primaries, 2008.
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Various lists of the Wonders of the World have been compiled from antiquity to the present day, in order to catalogue the world's most spectacular natural features and human-built structures.
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, also known as the Seven Wonders of the World or simply the Seven Wonders, is a list of seven notable structures present during classical antiquity. The first known list of seven wonders dates back to the 2nd–1st century BC.
Nationwide public opinion polls conducted with respect to the Republican primaries for the 2012 United States presidential election are as follows. The people named in the polls were either declared candidates, former candidates or received media speculation about their possible candidacy.
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postscript was limited to one vote for seven monuments per person/identity, but multiple voting was possible through telephone.