I’ve learned two things researching this post: Statues are apparently only measured by height(whatever happened to man’s obsession with length?), and that famous statues aren’t as big as we’d like to think. Let’s start with the second one.
I started off thinking that, say, the Mount Rushmore monument would surely be in the running for the largest statue in the world. Well, it’s not. Believe it or not, the faces are only sixty feet tall. The dearth of the girth: I was able to find zero information on the width of the monument, which may be one reason it’s not on “World’s Largest” lists. Height-wise, Mount Rushmore is the pits.
So what about the Sphinx? The sizable kitty certainly is taller at a height of sixty-six feet. I can actually say it’s an impressive 241 feet long, but it still doesn’t register in the top five largest statues. I have to wonder again about the whole tall-bias again.
Let’s give the US a shot again: The Statue of Liberty. The old gal stands much taller at an impressive 151 feet from base to torch. As incredible as that is, it’s less than a third the size of what’s considered the world’s tallest statue.
That record goes to the Spring Temple Buddha in China. It’s mind-boggling height adds up to 502 feet. That’s over forty stories tall. Even removing the height of the building supporting it, the statue itself still stands 420 feet tall, dwarfing the Statue of Liberty. That’s the statue’s toes pictured up there at the beginning of the post.