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  • This has nothing to do with physics, but we're all familiar with the nursery rhyme "London

  • Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London bridge is falling down, and was

  • rebuilt in Arizona."

  • Wait, Arizona?

  • THIS Arizona?

  • Yup!

  • Here it is in Lake Havasu City, near artificial Lake Havasu in the middle of the Arizona desert.

  • London, I think this merits some explanation.

  • I mean, in the early 1800s, when the already 600-year-old London bridge - that's the one

  • that had all of the houses and shops on it - was on its last legs, it made sense to replace

  • it with the less-awesome but brand spanking new "New London Bridge."

  • But by the 1960s, this new bridge was barely even 130 years old and already needed to be

  • replaced because it was sinking into the river Thames.

  • Was the City of London really so short on cash that it a) couldn't afford to fix it

  • and b) needed to sell the old bridge to fund a new, even more boring one?

  • Apparently so.

  • Also apparently, when American chainsaw tycoon Robert McCulloch actually offered to buy the

  • bridge, he though he was bidding on Tower Bridge (which, while it's often confused with

  • London Bridge by ignorant Americans like me, you'd think you'd do your research if you

  • were spending two and a half million dollars and buying a bridge).

  • And maybe McCulloch did do his research after all, because the Council member from the City

  • of London who was responsible for the sale of the bridge claimed that McCulloch knew

  • all along which bridge he was buying.

  • But, really, who would admit otherwise?

  • Anonymous sources from within the City of London still hint that "the silly American

  • really thought he was buying Tower Bridge."

  • But whether McCulloch got a bridge he wanted or a bridge he didn't but was too ashamed

  • to take back for a refund, he brought London Bridge to the town he had founded in Arizona

  • so he could have workers for his chainsaw factories, put it back together as a facade

  • built on land over a concrete frameand then dug a channel under it and filled it

  • with water.

  • And now the New Old New London Bridge lives out the rest of its days as an artificial

  • bridge in an artificial town on an artificial lake.

  • Oh yeah, and it's the third-biggest tourist attraction in the State of Arizona.

This has nothing to do with physics, but we're all familiar with the nursery rhyme "London

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