The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more

Built: Around 2560 BCE
Commissioned by: Pharaoh Khufu
Status: The only wonder still standing (overachiever)

How They Pulled It Off: Made of 2.3 million limestone blocks, each weighing up to 15 tons, the Great Pyramid stood 481 feet tall and held the record as the tallest structure on Earth for nearly 4,000 years. That's not a typo. Four thousand years. Workers moved the stones using wooden sledges on wet sand, a trick so effective that physicists only confirmed the physics of it in 2014. Ramps lifted the blocks into place while surveyors kept the base so level that modern laser measurements find it varies by less than an inch across its entire footprint. The Egyptians mastered geometry and astronomy long before anyone invented the instruments to measure them.

Built: Around 600 BCE
Commissioned by: King Nebuchadnezzar II for his homesick wife
Status: Lost to history

The Wonder Nobody Can Prove: Here is where things get interesting. Of all seven wonders, the Hanging Gardens are the only one no ancient eyewitness confirmed seeing in person. No archaeological trace has ever been found. Ancient descriptions mention lush terraced gardens rising high above the city, fed by sophisticated irrigation systems drawing water up from the Euphrates River using chain or screw pumps. Waterproofing the terraces would have required layers of reeds, asphalt, and lead, all materials the Mesopotamians had access to.

Built: Around 435 BCE
Commissioned by: The city of Olympia to honor Zeus
Status: Destroyed, possibly by fire

The Craft Behind the God: Standing 40 feet tall inside the Temple of Zeus, this was not a statue you glanced at on your way past. Ancient visitors reported feeling overwhelmed just entering the room. Master sculptor Phidias built it on a wooden framework, covering the skin in ivory panels and the robes in hammered gold sheets. The throne alone was decorated with ebony, ivory, gold, and gemstones. Phidias's workshop has since been excavated, and archaeologists found tools, ivory chips, and even a cup with his name scratched into it, confirming that one person, working with hand tools and extraordinary patience, produced something that left an entire civilization awestruck.

Built: Around 550 BCE (rebuilt 323 BCE)
Commissioned by: King Croesus of Lydia (first version)
Status: Destroyed by Gothic invaders, one column remains

Built To Impress: This Greek temple was renowned for its massive scale and architectural beauty. It measured about 377 feet long and 180 feet wide, with over 127 columns, each standing 60 feet high. Greek builders used advanced stone-working techniques for the era. Columns were built from stacked marble drums, precisely cut and fitted. To raise these heavy drums into position, workers used wooden cranes powered by human labor through a system of pulleys and winches. The Greeks understood mechanical advantage, allowing relatively small forces applied over long distances to move massive weights. That a single Gothic raid eventually reduced it to rubble, leaving one column standing like an architectural afterthought, is one of history's more frustrating footnotes.

Built: Around 350 BCE
Commissioned by: Artemisia II of Caria for her husband Mausolus
Status: Destroyed by earthquakes; stones were later used to build a castle

The Tomb That Named All Tombs: This structure was so extraordinary that Mausolus's name became the word for every grand tomb built afterward. That is a remarkable legacy for a Persian satrap from what is now southwestern Turkey. Standing approximately 148 feet tall, it blended Greek, Egyptian, and Lycian architecture into something no one had seen before. Builders cut massive blocks of white marble using bronze saws with sand as the abrasive, then transported and lifted them into place with the same pulley systems used in temple construction. The finished structure had three distinct sections: a square base, a middle colonnade of 36 columns, and a pyramid-shaped roof topped with a sculpture of a four-horse chariot. The earthquakes that eventually brought it down did so gradually, over centuries. Its stones were then used to build a nearby castle, which is, depending on your outlook, either efficient or heartbreaking.

Built: Around 280 BCE
Commissioned by: People of Rhodes to celebrate victory over an invading army
Status: Destroyed by an earthquake; ruins remained a tourist attraction

The Bronze Giant: At approximately 108 feet tall, this bronze statue of the sun god Helios stood at the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes. Sculptor Chares of Lindos solved the problem of working at increasing heights with an elegant method: he simply built the earth up around the statue as it rose, creating ramps from compacted soil alongside the structure. Bronze plates, cast in sections, were attached to an iron framework filled with stone blocks for stability. When the statue was complete, the earth was removed. When an earthquake brought it down roughly 54 years later, the ruins were so impressive that tourists came to see them for another 800 years. Even collapsed, it was worth the trip.

Built: Around 280 BCE
Commissioned by: Ptolemy I Soter (completed by his son Ptolemy II)
Status: Destroyed by earthquakes

The Ancient World's GPS: Rising between 330 and 450 feet above the Mediterranean, the Pharos Lighthouse guided ships into Alexandria's harbor for over a millennium. It featured three tiers: a square base, an octagonal middle section, and a cylindrical top, crowned with a statue and a fire beacon. The lighthouse's construction required solving multiple engineering challenges. Its foundation had to withstand constant wave action, which builders addressed by using hydraulic concrete—a mixture that could set underwater. Massive limestone blocks were fitted together and secured with molten lead poured into the joints. The beacon at the top used a large fire, with polished bronze mirrors to reflect and amplify the light.

“The future belongs to those who dare to engineer the impossible.”

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.