The Slightly-less Leaning Tower of Pisa

I've long said that world records in the field of structures are slightly (ridiculously) specific. I mean, sure, there are legitimate technical differences between tall structures (which can be any old pile of materials) and tall buildings (which need to have occupiable space, and are therefore tougher to build really tall), for example. But there are some obscure ones out there.

Take the Confederation Bridge, for example. It's long. 12.9km long, to be precise. But it's not the world's longest bridge from land mass to land mass. Nor does it have the world's longest span length, a measure of the distance between two supports. Rather, it's the world's longest bridge over ice covered waters.

And now Reuters is reporting on a structure in the Netherlands that is gunning for another world record with world-class nit-pickyness. You see, they have a church that leans a bit.


Not qutie as much as the leaning tower of Pisa, you might say, and you'd be right. BUT! The guy in the following video would like you to consider that if you take the total lean of the church, and divide it by the structure's height, the resulting ratio is larger for the church than it is for the leaning tower! Said differently, if you could resize the two structures to be the same size but preserve their tilt angle, the church would have the bigger total tilt. This is all an incredibly complicated way of saying that the church has a greater angle of tilt. Congratulations, Netherlands, you are now the proud owners of the world record holder for "greatest height-to-lean ratio", or "greatest tilt in a hypothetical world where all structures can be resized to be the same size, but preserving tilt angles".