Oldest And Scariest Bridges
WORLD HISTORY | October 10, 2019
SHIMANE PREFECTURE, JAPAN - OCTOBER 10, 2017: Source: (Photo by Yuri Smityuk\TASS via Getty Images #866225524)
Vehicles move along Eshima Ohashi rigid-frame bridge connecting Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, and Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, over Lake Nakaumi.
Bridges come in all sizes, shapes, and levels of weirdness. Some of them can also have a fear factor connected to them, such as the Eshima Ohashi bridge.
The Eshima Ohashi bridge in Japan is like a roller coaster and a water slide rolled into one. Built to allow ships to pass underneath, the length of this curvy bridge is one mile long and 11 meters wide.
Located in Baoshan, Yunnan, China is the Longjiang Bridge, one of the longest suspension bridges ever built. Built in 2016, this bridge is 3,924 feet in length and has the longest span height on earth. Before the completion of this bridge, the world’s highest bridges were Aizhai and Balinghe.
There are many steep bridges that cause a person to lose their lunch comparable to the incline and decline of a mountainside. Imagine being stuck on one of these steep bridges during rush hour. Besides this bridge in Louisiana, there is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that is not only really steep but also odd-shaped. It has a very steep drop down almost to the water level and then extends out 4.3 miles across. Even local people that live in the area are afraid to drive across it.
This bridge called Old Alton Bridge, built back in 1884, does not really look very scary unless crossing it at night when suddenly the car headlights go out and the engine shuts off. The story is that this bridge is actually haunted due to the hanging of a man who raised goats. According to the story, it happened one night in 1938, when the Klu Klux Klan grabbed the man and hung him over the edge of the bridge. Afterward, they looked and all they saw was the noose but not the man. Assuming he had somehow escaped, they went to his home and killed his family to prevent them from telling anyone. Ever since that night, there have been ghost stories told about how the man has been seen as a headless ghost with a herd of goats behind him, holding goat heads in his hands or other strange sightings.
A competition was held in 1996 in order to come up with ideas for a pedestrian bridge to connect both sides of River Tyne. The Gateshead Council headed up the competition and specified what they were looking for in this bridge. It needed to allow ships to pass under it without obstructing the Quayside and also look well with the other existing bridges. Many architectural companies submitted designs. There are scheduled times when the bridge will tilt or vessels with a certain mast height can request a bridge tilt as long as they give seven days advance notice.
Located in Shiniuzhai Geopark, a once wooden bridge was replaced with the world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge. Made of double-layered glass, it is 590 feet high off the ground. The wooden bridge was scary enough, but now the fear level has definitely increased. It was no easy task for the 11 engineers either to accomplish this conversion working 12 hour days.
Thrill-seekers do not have to go to theme parks any more to get their thrills. They can just drive or walk across some of these scary bridges.
Tags: Bridges
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Penny Chavers
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