Mont Blanc above Chamonix sits at 15,780 feet. The highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe. It's the baddest mountain at the baddest ski area in the world. Mont Blanc is such an intimidating face that its incredibleness is matched by the incredibleness of there actually being a tram built into its face.

Built in 1955, the Aiguille du Midi is still to this day the highest vertical ascent of any cable in the world. An ear-popping 9,100 feet are covered in 20 minutes flat. Built into the shear-rock face, the top station has an elevator in its interior that rises 13 stories to the different look-out terraces. It's the top of the world, from the top of the world's greatest ski area, Chamonix. (source)

Still not impressed?
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Wow!

A hoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.

Here's a question for you: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver.)



Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.



The accident forced an 11-day closure of the eastbound lanes of Interstate 70. (The bridge itself remained closed even after the highway reopened.) The driver of the rig was uninjured, although he was later cited for not having clearance to drive on the interstate.



The Kansas Department of Transportation said the construction company for which the driver worked would be liable for the cost of repairs to the overpass, which were estimated at $134,000 as of late March 2006.

A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.

Huang Wenge, township head of Bujia in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, and colleague Xia Jianzhong were sentenced to 18 months and one year in jail, respectively, for not stopping the project.

"Huang Wenge and Xia Jianzhong, who were in charge of road management and supervision, did not ask the contractors to provide certificates guaranteeing their proficiency. When they knew the bridge was being built by a blind contractor, they did not stop it. After the blind contractor changed the blueprint, he carried out the work only using a roughly drawn draft of the plan, which caused the bridge to collapse.” Xinhua did not explain how the contractor was able to run the project considering his inability to see.