Big old abandoned buildings intrigue me. And they don't get much bigger and older than the abandoned ancient city of Machu Picchu. That's probably part of the reason that Machu Picchu was recently voted one of the new seven wonders of the world in a contest run by the New7Wonders Foundation. The other six winners were Chichen Itza, the Taj Mahal, Rome's Colosseum, Jordan's Petra, Brazil's Christ Redeemer statue, and the Great Wall of China.

Machu Picchu, believed to have been built in the fifteenth century and abandoned in the 1500s, was rediscovered on July 24, 1911. Yale professor Hiram Bingham located the ruins of this ancient Incan city, complete with palaces and temples, in the Andes Mountains in Peru. A quick overview about Machu Picchu is available in the World Book Encyclopedia online, available through our web site at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm. If you'd like to read historical newspaper articles about the expedition, try our Newspaper Archives database (available in the library only). Or, for more detailed reading, we also have some books on the topic:

The Machu Picchu guidebook : a self-guided tour, by Ruth M. Wright, Alfredo Valencia Zegarra. (call number 918.537 W)
Machu Picchu, by Sheryl Peterson. (call number JUV 985.3 P)
Machu Picchu, by Elizabeth Mann ; with illustrations by Amy Crehore. (call number JUV 985.3 M)

If you'd like to read more about the recent "New Seven Wonders of the World," try our Newsbank database (also available at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm) for current news articles. The contest winners were announced on July 7, 2007. You might also like to stop by the Stearns Room, where we keep the most recent month's newspapers in paper copy.

The new seven wonders contest was decided by call-in and internet votes from all over the world. A more extensive and "serious" project is the UNESCO world heritage program. According to their web site, the UNESCO project "seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity." There are several hundred sites designated as World Heritage sites, and you can find the list at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. Machu Picchu, Petra, the Great Wall, the Taj Mahal, and Chichen-Itza are all World Heritage sites, as is the Parthenon, the Great Barrier Reef, and hundreds of other sites of historical, cultural, and natural significance.

If the Writer's Almanac is to be believed, the New York Times owes its existence in some degree to bad blood between newspaperman Horace Greeley and his one-time protegee:

"The founders were Henry J. Raymond and his partner George Jones, and Raymond was motivated to start the paper in part by a desire for revenge. He'd spent 10 years working for Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune, only to be laid off when he caught a fever. He intended The New York Times to put the New York Tribune out of business."---Writer's Almanac, 9/18/2006

The paper, which was founded as the New-York Daily Times on September 18, 1851, has won more Pulitzer Prizes for journalism than any other North American newspaper (Source: World Book Online). Adolph Simon Ochs bought the paper in 1896. Ochs wanted the paper to avoid the sensationalism practised by many of its competitors, and the slogan "All the News that's Fit to Print" reflects his focus on hard news and his drive for unprejudiced journalism. He is also credited with starting the New York Times Magazine and New York Times Book Review (originally titled "Saturday Review of Books and Art").

The New York Times is available in the library going back to 1963. You'll find it on microfilm for 1963-2005. Just stop by the reference desk if you'd like some help getting started with the microfilm. If you prefer to see the electronic version, it's available in the Newsbank database, accessible on our web site at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultNews.htm. (Note that there are separate links for in-library use versus outside use.) The Newsbank collection goes back to January 1, 2000. We also retain the latest month of the paper copy in the Stearns Room and have an additional five months in storage, should you wish to see the newsprint.

If you'd like to know more about the Times, its history, and its controversies, we also have more than a dozen books about the paper, including:

Buried by the Times : the Holocaust and America's most important newspaper, by Laurel Leff.
The times of my life and my life with the Times, by Max Frankel.
The Pentagon papers : national security or the right to know, by Susan Dudley Gold.
Hard news : the scandals at the New York times and their meaning for American media, by Seth Mnookin.