RD201906

1

“Skyscraper” didn’t always mean

a tall building. The earliest refer-

ence to the word dates back to

1788, when it was used to describe a

really tall horse, according to The Ox-

ford English Dictionary. By the 1790s,

a Philadelphia physician had used

the term to describe the triangular

sail at the very top of a ship’s mast.

2

Today, Asia is leading the

race to the top, with 88 sky-

scrapers erected in 2018 in

China alone. But builders there

still use a surprisingly an-

cient scaffolding material:

bamboo. In Hong Kong,

climbers known as

By Jen McCaffery

Surprising

Facts About

Skyscrapers

28 june 2019 Illustration by Serge Bloch

Reader’s Digest

13 THINGS