Globe Trotting: The (New) Tallest Building in the World: All the Must-Know Stats

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, August 2, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

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The clever cats over at Gizmodo have broken out their trusty TI-82s and simplified, for the masses, how to best comprehend the astounding stats of the tallest buildings in the world. (Infographics: we like them!) If that skinny one on the far left doesn't look familiar, it's because it hasn't actually been built yet; the Kingdom Tower, soon to rise in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will be the tallest building in the world once complete, beating out Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Earlier reports estimated its height as one mile, but the official word is 3,280 feet, or one kilometer. That's more than 560 feet taller than the Burj.

Other Kingdom Tower vitals:
· Builder: Kingdom Holding, the Saudi firm owned by billionaire businessman Prince Alwaleed
· A total cost of $1.2B to build
· A Four Seasons Hotel, Four Seasons residences, office space, condos, etc.
· 59 elevators (traveling 22.3 miles an hour up to the observation deck)
· 12 escalators
· A 98-foot-diameter penthouse at floor 157
· Total space: 500,000 square meters (about 5.7M square feet)

· Prince Alwaleed signs deal to build world’s tallest tower [Arabian Business via Gawker]
· Mile-High Tower Twice the Height of Burj Khalifa to be Built [Curbed National]
· The First Image of the World's New Tallest Building [Gizmodo]

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Globe Trotting: Six-Thousand People Help Build World's Tallest Lego Tower

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, April 11, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Brazil has just sidled ahead of Chile in terms of an essential indicator of national excellence: the ability to come together and create buildings out of toys. Thousands of people—many of them kids—have just completed the construction of a 102-foot-tall Lego tower in Sao Paulo, breaking the previous world record (held by Santiago, Chile) by nearly 10 inches. The project took four days and 500,000 Lego pieces, which, along with special Lego designers, were all flown in from the company headquarters in Denmark. Brazilian soccer legend Cafu (above) attached the topmost piece.

Video: World's Tallest Lego Tower

· Brazil Builds World's Tallest Lego Tower [BuzzFeed]
· Block party: Brazil builds world's tallest Lego tower [CNN]

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