The Story of Leaning Tower of Pisa

We tend to hate our mistakes, but sometimes mistakes can be considered masterpieces. This is the story of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Tower of Pisa started being built in the 12th century as a grand bell tower for the cathedral. When building the second floor, they realized that the tower had started tilting because of weak foundations. A war broke out and stopped construction for a century, which helped the foundation stabilize (likely the Tower would not be here today if not for that).

Despite the mistake, they proceeded with the build, trying to make up for it in the subsequent floors, and end up finishing it 200 years after starting. This allowed a young man called Galileo Galilei to test his concepts on gravity by dropping two cannonballs of different masses to demonstrate that their speed of descent was independent of their mass.

The Tower kept inclining little by little and in 2000’s reached a peak of 5.5 degrees which closed the Tower due to the severe risk of collapsing. Since then, renovation works have been able to reduce the inclination to less than 4 degrees and make it stable for people from all over the world to take funny photos pretending to hold up the leaning tower or push it back upright.

How often did you try to hide a mistake or fix it right away? By viewing our shortcomings through a different lens, mistakes can turn them into works of art. So, next time you make a mistake, think if there is an opportunity to create something unique and special.

Craving more? Check out the source behind this Brain Snack!