Unbelievable Facts - Strange Facts - Strange Structures

The only solid walls in Philip Johnson’s Glass House are in the bathroom. The rest of the house in New Canaan, Connecticut, is completely transparent, although there are sliding panels should the homeowner require privacy.

In the heart of the Australian outback near Ayers Rock is a hotel built in the shape of a crocodile.

The dome on Monticello, once the home of former US President Thomas Jefferson, conceals a billiard room. In Jefferson ’s day billiards was illegal in Virginia.

The top part of an 18 th century lodge in Dunmore Park, Scotland, is built in the shape of a pineapple.

The Triangular Lodge at Rushton in Northamptonshire was built in homage to the Holy Trinity. Everything about the building relates to the number three. It has three sides, each of which measures 33ft. There are three gables on each side it has three storeys and triangular or hexagonal rooms decorated with trefoils or triangles in groups of three. All of the Latin inscriptions have 33 letters.

The Colosseum in Rome was built from 292,000 cartloads of stone.

The major tourist attraction at Margate, New Jersey, is a hotel in the shape of an elephant. The six-storey Elephant Hotel has its reception area in the hind legs.

The smallest house in Britain is a 19 th century fishermen’s cottage at Conwy in North Wales. It consists of two tiny rooms and a staircase and measure just over 8ft from front to back.

Each year there is one ton of cement poured for every man, woman and child in the world.

The Tokyo head office of contraception manufacturer Fuji Latex is built in the shape of a condom.

The Empire State Building weighs less than the earth which was excavated for its foundations.

In 1931, industrialist Robert Ilg built half-sized replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago, and lived in it for several years.

Back in the 1 st century AD, the Roman emperor Augustus imposed a height limit of 80ft on tower blocks within the city.

The ten-room Ice Hotel in Lapland offers the ultimate in cold comfort. Built entirely from snow and ice, the average room temperature id -4°C. the beds are made from packed snow. There is even a small sub-zero chapel for weddings - the perfect place to say “I d-d-d-do”. Guests are advised to book early as the hotel melts every April and has to be rebuilt the following winter.

Unlike most skyscrapers, Chicago ’s Mercantile exchange Building was built without an internal steel skeleton. Apparently it relies on the thickness off its walls to stay up.