20 June 2018
Stairs are an integral part of your home. Used as a structural device, they allow you to travel with ease from the ground floor upstairs. However, there are a host of other uses for custom built wooden stairs that have taken place over the past couple of centuries. With a fascinating history due to their various purposes, we have composed a list of a few of our favourite stair facts!
6,000 years ago, the first stairs were created with tree trunks. These were made in order to aid survival, placed strategically in order to help people travel up mountains and steep valleys. These allowed movements to be made easier.
Before 1948, those who lived in The White House would navigate their way through the building using ropes and ladders, as well as other creative mechanisms.
Masonry stairs, which can be found in castle towers, always ascend in a clockwise direction. This is unlike most traditional staircases, which travel in the opposite direction. The reason in which castle stairs ascend in this particular way is that they were made to aid the defence of the building. These stairs allowed more movement to take place when defenders were travelling, especially considering that they were to wield their swords with their right hands. In addition to the direction, each individual stair is created in a different width. The defenders of the castle would be able to recognise which step is slightly wider than the rest, whereas the attackers would slip after misjudging their step.
There are many reasons why climbing stairs are classed as vigorous exercise, one of which is that it is a fantastic way of raising your heart rate, getting the blood pumping around your body. In fact, repeatedly climbing stairs burns more calories per minute than jogging! There is a multitude of ways in which you can make this workout slightly harder, such as the addition of weights. As a result of this, it is an excellent way of burning fat while gaining muscle, in addition to increasing your cardiovascular fitness.
In 2014, Christian Riedl from Germany created the world record for the highest vertical height climbing stairs in 12 hours. This record meant that he climbed over 43,000 ft, making 71 ascents, with each comprised of 988 steps. However, this isn’t the only stair-related record in the book. Other records range from the tallest staircase built in one minute on Minecraft and the world record for climbing stairs on their head.
City Hall is known for being an economical building, where the shape of the hall improves energy efficiency due to a smaller surface area. The helical staircase covers 500 metres and has been created to follow the curve of the building to reduce noise pollution and echoes inside the building.
If you’re curious about discovering more about the history of staircases and unusual phenomenon surrounding them, then take a look at John Templer’s book, The Staircase. Within the pages of this book, he divulged that those who are single are more likely to fall down stairs when compared to those who are married. In order to come to this conclusion, he looked at the number of accidents that have happened on staircases, from missteps to deaths and hospital treatments.
The Eiffel Tower has many connections to elephants, such as the quantity of paint on the tower weighing the equivalent of ten elephants. But, most interestingly, one was once escorted up to the first floor of the tower. During World War II, circus shows declined in popularity due to the lack of safety in travelling across cities in order to watch the shows. However, once the war had ended, circuses were still experiencing a decrease in the number of people who were walking through their doors. In order to increase the numbers, the Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione staged a stunt in which they took their elephant up the Eiffel Tower.
