Our Evolving Culture

ARCHITECTURE

11th century San Marco, Venice. The Doge's chapel was modeled on a now destroyed church in the rival--and more splendid--metropolis Constantinople. But as it prospered, Venice both updated and preserved San Marco's splendor: five shallow Byzantine brick domes were covered over by metal ones. The 320-ft. campanile, foreground, raised in 912, collapsed in 1902. It was rebuilt in 1912--on its 1,000th birthday.

1113-1150 Angkor Wat, Cambodia (213 ft. tall). Part holy mountain, part city, the sprawling temple built by King Suryavarman II was intended to be proof of his divinity.

1224-1424 Notre Dame de Chartres (112 ft.). Again and again, over the course of 200 years, fire destroyed the cathedral as commoners, clergy and nobility struggled to raise it. But with its towers, sculpture and luminous stained glass, it became the crown of the High Gothic age as it celebrated the piety, pride and prosperity of Crusader France.

1550-1557 Suleimaniye Mosque, Istanbul (174 ft.). Suleiman the Magnificent's reply to Justinian's Hagia Sophia.

1555 St. Basil's, Moscow (107 ft.), marked Ivan the Terrible's victory over the Mongols.

1506-1626 St. Peter's Basilica, Rome (452 ft.), took 120 years to complete by a Who's Who of architects, including Bramante, Raphael, Bernini and Michelangelo. Begun by the warrior Pope Julius II, it is the fortress of Catholic faith.

1630-1653 The Taj Mahal, Agra (200 ft.), was built by Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan as the tomb of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. Dethroned by their son Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan gazed upon the Taj from prison and was later buried beside Mumtaz.

1889 The Eiffel Tower, Paris (984 ft.), was built as a temporary structure to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. It was first called an eyesore and then, as the world's tallest structure, became a source of pride, defining the skyline of the City of Lights.

1930 The Chrysler Building, New York City (1,046 ft.), was quickly surpassed by the Empire State Building--but only in height. Its Art Deco beauty celebrated a Golden Age of American capitalism.

1996 Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1,476 ft.). Peaked like Angkor Wat, the world's tallest building attests to the ambitions of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

SHIPS

c. 850 The Vikings' longboats were versatile: they could either be rowed or moved by sail, maneuvered by a steering oar on the right side. They struck fear throughout Europe.

c. 1150 The mariner's compass was used by the Chinese well before 1050, the year the instrument made its appearance in European ships in Mediterranean waters.

c. 1200 The steering oar was slowly replaced by the rudder, a maritime invention from East Asia that had made its way to Europe via Arab mariners.

1295 Marco Polo described huge ships in Chinese seaports with separate watertight bulkheads. Without the compartments, ships with pierced hulls would sink. A half-century would pass before Western naval engineers adopted the technology.

1417 Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal organized a naval academy of engineers, mapmakers and ship's pilots. Borrowing from Arab vessels, they designed the first caravels. Propelled by lateen rigging, the three-masted ships were fast and tacked into the wind.

1492 In 1492, in the service of Spain, the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus took the caravels Nina and Pinta along with the Santa Maria on his historic voyage across the Atlantic.

1588 The invincible Spanish Armada, with about 130 ships, sailed to conquer England. Its defeat by the English navy, with its smaller but more maneuverable ships, would change the balance of world naval power.

1775 American rebels gave the name Enterprise to a 70-ton sloop captured from the British. It was later burned to prevent recapture.

1807 Robert Fulton's steamboat Clermont ran from New York City to Albany in 32 hrs. A sailboat would have taken four days.

1831 The U.S. Navy had a fourth ship by the name Enterprise, a 194-ton schooner.

1877 The fifth ship by the name Enterprise was a 1,375-ton steam-powered sloop of war.

Mid-1800s The French and British vied to build the better ironclad battleship. In 1862 the Union's Monitor and the Confederacy's Merrimack clashed in the first battle of ironclads in history. The result was indecisive.

1938-1958 In World War II, the U.S.S. Enterprise was an aircraft carrier. She sank 71 enemy ships and downed 911 planes. Severely damaged by kamikaze attack at the end of the war, she would later be sold for scrap.

1961 The latest U.S.S. Enterprise was commissioned, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ever built.

1981 The space shuttle took a new ship shape into a new sea.

Final frontier? U.S.S. Enterprise

PAPER

A.D. 105 Invention According to tradition, an imperial eunuch named Cai Lun invented paper. The material, however, has been found in Chinese tombs dating to the 2nd century B.C. By the end of the 8th century, Chinese paper craftsmen had set up shop in the Middle East.

11th century Movable type was developed in China by the year 1048 and the metal variety in Korea by 1403. However, it was impractical for the ideographs both used (as many as 400,000 characters). Rubbing off wood blocks and stone, practiced since the 7th century, was the preferred technology of a versatile book trade.

1150 Technology transfer The Arabs took paper from Iraq and Egypt to North Africa and Muslim Spain.

13th century Italy gets paper Finally Europe had a cheap alternative to vellum and parchment. (It took the skins of 80 lambs to create a 200-page parchment manuscript.)

1300s Block printing arrived in Europe, perhaps brought by merchants and bureaucrats of the expanding Mongol Empire. And paper was available for use.

1455 Johann Gutenberg invented an efficient press in Germany and used movable type to publish Bibles, transforming Europe.

1591 Those rotten journalists A Chinese border official complained of irresponsible "news-bureau entrepreneurs" who give no consideration to "matters of [national] emergency."

1605 Newspapers The first weekly appeared in Antwerp; it would be 1650 before the first daily was published, in Leipzig.

1776 Thomas Paine His printed pamphlet Common Sense would inspire the Declaration of Independence; his American Crisis rallied Washington's troops at Valley Forge.

1811 Industrial Revolution The steam engine began to power the press; the rotary press (invented in 1846) allowed runs of 20,000 sheets an hour.

1851 The New York Times, then the New York Daily Times, was founded. Adolph S. Ochs bought the paper in 1896. His descendants still run the Gray Lady.

1890s The press barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst engaged in a circulation war filled with sensational headlines and "yellow journalism." Hearst's papers helped foment the Spanish-American War.

1931 Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia. Beginning in the late 1960s, he became the founder of the first truly global media empire, with properties ranging from newspapers to a movie studio to cable and broadcast television networks.

1968 Toward e-paper Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, was born in Taiwan. Though Yahoo has ventured into print magazines, its greatest asset is the 385 million page views its sites provide every day.

SHOES

sandals

c. 1000-1300 North America A no-frills yucca-fiber model from the Anasazi.

1850-1870 Bolivia It's time for a fiesta with this painted leather-and-wood clog with a silver buckle.

1999 U.S.A. Sole-fitting Wraptor by Teva for yuppie trekking.

platforms

1600 Venice So much cork was needed for the fashion that whole forests were endangered.

18th century India An ornate silver-covered wood paduka with a gold toe knob.

19th century Turkey Altitude to keep feet from street dust.

1970s Italy A mod combo of platform and heel.

boots

1490 Germany Steel sabbaton worn with a suit of armor by a nobleman.

1896 Europe Gold kid and green velvet button boots.

1920 France Fuchsia satin tango boots.

1995 Britain Doc Martens were must-haves for a while.

suffering for style

c. 960 to 1900s China 1936 coverlet for bound foot; some were 3 in. long.

c. 1695 Portugal An early high heel for a man, with silver lace and pink silk.

1980s France Yves Saint Laurent pumped up biker envy with this rhinestone strap.

1998 U.S.A. Painfully elegant silver lame stiletto mule with chinchilla trim by Manolo Blahnik.