Structure-related events for Centenary timeline

1908 - 2008

Click on the events below for further information.

Decade	Year	Event
1900s	1906	The Ritz (UK) opens and is the first substantial steel-frame structure in London.
	1908	The Summer Olympics are held in London (UK).
	1909	The Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower (USA) becomes the world's tallest building at 213m tall.
1910s	1913	The Woolworth Building (USA) is completed and becomes the world's tallest building at 241m.
	1913	The Centennial Hall, Poland.
	1919	The War Memorial (UK), also known as The Cenotaph, is completed in London's Whitehall.
1920s	1922	Queen Mary opens the new Waterloo Station in London (UK) with 21 platforms and a concourse nearly 244m long.
	1922	County Hall in London (UK) opens, but is not completed until 1933.
	1923	The Lingotto Fiat Factory (Italy) opens.
1930s	1930	The Chrysler Building is the tallest building in the world from 1930 until 1931 when it is surpassed by the Empire State Building. It is still the tallest brick building in the world today.
	1932	The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens.
	1932	Senate House, Bloomsbury is built from 1932-1937 in an art deco style.
	1935	Work is completed on Battersea Power Station A (with art deco interiors by Halliday).
	1937	The Golden Gate Bridge opens to vehicle traffic, providing a major artery between Marin County and San Francisco.
	1939	The Johnson Wax Building (USA) is completed; it has over 200 types of curved red bricks making up the exterior and interior of the building, and Pyrex glass tubing from the ceiling and clear stories to let in soft light.
1940s	1940	The Tacoma Narrows Bridge (USA) becomes the longest twin suspension bridge in the world (replaced 1950).
	1943	The Pentagon (USA), headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, is completed.
	1944	The Mulberry Harbour (France) is built for D-Day during World War 2 to ease and speed up the unloading process, so that Allied troops were supplied as they advanced across France after breaking out from Normandy.
	1947	The Bankside Power Station is commissioned following a power shortage.
1950s	1951	Royal Festival Hall opens in London (UK) - it becomes the first post-war building to become protected as a Grade I listed building (in April 1988).
	1952	The Chesapeake Bay Bridge (USA) is completed.
	1956	Lake Pontchartrain Causeway (USA) becomes the world's longest bridge.
	1957	The Lovell Telescope (UK) a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, is completed.
1960s	1960	The Stadio Olimpico (Italy) opens as the site for the Summer Olympics.
	1962	The Space Needle (USA) is completed; like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Space Needle was created for an international exposition, in this case, the 1962 World Fair.
	1963	The Mill Bank Tower (UK) is completed.
	1964	The Verrazano Narrows Bridge (USA) is completed.
	1964	The Forth Road Bridge (UK) opens; it is a suspension bridge spanning the Firth of Forth, connecting the capital city Edinburgh at South Queensferry to Fife at North Queensferry.
	1964	The BT Tower (UK) is completed.
	1965	The Ostankino TV Tower (Russia) becomes the world's 2nd tallest tower.
	1967	The two auditoriums, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room in London (UK), both part of the South Bank arts complex, are opened.
	1969	The John Hancock Center (USA) is opened; this one-hundred-story skyscraper, when completed, was the tallest building in the world outside New York City at 344m tall.
1970s	1972	The Transamerica Pyramid (USA) becomes the tallest and most recognizable skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline.
	1973	The Sydney Opera House is completed; it has an expressionist modern design, with a series of large precast concrete 'shells', each taken from the same hemisphere, forming the roofs of the structure.
	1974	The 110-storey Sears Tower (USA) is completed and is 443m tall.
	1976	CN Tower is completed and is 553m tall.
	1976	The Museum of London (UK) is opened.
1980s	1980	The Ganter Bridge (Switzerland) becomes the world's longest concrete arch.
	1981	Tower 42 (UK) becomes the UK's tallest building for 10 years, topped by One Canada Square, Canary Wharf in 1991.
	1981	The Humber Bridge (UK) is completed.
	1981	Sydney Tower (Australia), also known as the AMP Tower, AMP Centrepoint Tower, Centrepoint Tower or just Centrepoint, becomes Sydney's tallest free-standing structure, and the second tallest in Australia.
	1982	The Thames Barrier (UK) is completed; it is a flood control structure for the River Thames.
	1983	Itaipu Dam (Brazil/Paraguay) becomes the largest power plant on earth, supplying 26% of the electrical power consumption of Brazil and 78% for that of Paraguay.
	1986	The Lloyd's Building (UK) is completed. It is the home of insurance institution Lloyd's of London, and is located at One Lime Street, in the City of London.
1990s	1990	The Bank of China Tower (Hong Kong) opens.
	1991	One Canada Square, Canary Wharf (UK) opens.
	1993	The first phase of building the Three Gorges Dam (China) begins.
	1995	The Oriental Pearl Tower (China) at 468m is the 3rd tallest structure in the world, and the tallest in Asia.
	1995	The Pont de Normandie Bridge (France) is completed after seven years construction; its total length is 856m between the 2 piers.
	1998	The Petronas Towers (Malaysia) becomes the tallest buildings in the world at 452m.
	1999	Burj Al Arab, United Arab Emirates
	1999	The Millennium Dome (UK) is completed.
	1999	The London Eye, or Millennium Wheel, is completed. It is now the most popular paid-for visitor attraction in the UK.
2000s	2000	The Oresund bridge/tunnel linking Sweden and Denmark becomes the world's longest single bridge carrying both road and railway traffic.
	2000	Osaka Maritime Museum (Japan) opens.
	2001	Glasgow Science Centre (UK) opens.
	2002	Gateshead Millennium Bridge (UK), nicknamed the Blinking Eye Bridge, opens.
	2002	The Falkirk Wheel, named after the nearby town of Falkirk in central Scotland, opens and is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal.
	2003	Taipei 101 (Taiwan) becomes the new world's tallest tower (1,666ft).
	2004	The Swiss Re or Gherkin (UK) opens and becomes London's first environmentally sustainable tall building.
	2005	Loetschberg tunnel (Switzerland) becomes the longest in tunnel in the Alps and 3rd longest in world (21 miles).
	2007	Wembley Stadium (UK) is completed.

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