One year mark and poll results

Good day to all my readers. This very short blog celebrates the one year mark since it began. 38 blog entries and 3000 visitors later, I am the most read English blogger in French Quebec (who isn't part of the official media). I have greatly enjoyed sharing my cynicism with you all and hope to have ruined some of your fun, just as a kid who is told about the fictitious nature of Santa. From Saddam's execution and ridiculous smoking laws to Bear baiting and glowing cats, I look forward to bringing my own style of historical shade to the current events of next year (Don't let me down Putin and Gore!). As I always say, a historian would be a lot less useful if anyone could actually learn from the mistakes of the past. Lucky for me, no one ever does.

As for the 2nd poll of 2007, the leaning tower of Pisa (183 feet tall) has edged out the other competitors (33% of the vote) to become the most overrated world structure. I definitely agree that this structure would be much more subtle and anonymous were it not for the slant.

On the history of that slant, it seems that the land the tower was built on was unstable and the contractors of 1174 AD were as shifty and incompetent as today. One of the tower's side started sinking when construction had only reached the third floor. Instead of fixing the problem, the architects simply built the following floors with the ceilings higher at one end. As a result, the tower actually curves. It was declared a world heritage site in 1987 and petitions to straighten it out in recent years have widely been rejected by the Pisans who know that high rate tourism will stagnate if the visitors can no longer see the biggest architectural mistake in history.

I will now contact the United Nations Records Center to inform them of the Tower's ''most overrated structure on the planet'' prize it has been discerned by my illustrious readers.

(Pictured: Vladimir Putin, my muse - The slanty tower of Pisa)

End.