This table contains a list of fifty wonders of the modern world compared across a few rudimentary categories. The criteria for selection are outlined in Pier Paolo Tamburelli’s introductory essay to this issue. The number fifty has been chosen a priori, suggesting that an abundance of evidence exist that wonders are an integral part of modern life. Their ordering – alphabetically in the English language – is a neutral method of enumeration. The table is a work in progress, and the data contained in it has been inserted where sufficiently accurate information was available. The very nature of wonders poses almost infinite challenges in terms of classification: Their histories are often undocumented, their attendance difficult to quantify, their authors multiple and at times unknown. The sources – sometimes books and articles, but most often the internet – are only an approximate starting point for an examination that is insightful, although inevitably incomplete. Despite these undeniable difficulties, there is evident value in a comparative observation of modern wonders.
