New 7 Wonders of the World In Newsweek this week, there was a short article about a competition to select the New 7 Wonders of the World. It seemed pretty interesting to me so I thought I would do a speech about it. We are having a speech contest in a couple of weeks and I agreed to be the target speaker for the evaluation contest. To write my speech, I needed more information so I went to the 7 Wonders web site; www.new7wonders.com. The foundation, is hoping that as many as 100,000,000 will vote for the most worthy of the 21 historically significant, man made landmarks. 77 landmarks were submitted for consideration. The 21 finalists are:

• The Acropolis
• Machu Picchu
• The Colliseum
• The Kremlin
• Hagia Sofia
• The Eiffel Tower
• Taj Mahal
• Ankor Wat
• Alhambra
• Kiyomizu Temple
• Christ Redeemer\
• Great Wall of China
• Petra
• Pyramids at Giza
• Statue of Liberty
• Stonehenge\
• Sydney Opera House

You can vote for up to 7 wonders for free. You can only vote once. However, if you have one special wonder that you would like to vote for you can ... for $2. For your cash, the foundation sends you a .pdf certificate that you can frame. Too corny, but it will make a good prop for my speech. You can vote throughout the rest of 2006 and the first half of 2007. The New 7 Wonders will be announced on 7 July 2007.

My special vote was for the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, Turkey. It is a beautiful structure filled with mosaics. It sits across the street from the Blue Mosque, another structure that merits a place on the list.