Located between Kobe and Awaji-shima, Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, is more than 2 miles long, making it the longest suspension bridge in the world, as of 2010. It is also the tallest. Each of the two towers that suspend the bridge's expanse measure 928 feet. With Japan's unpredictable weather and geographic position, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes pose possible problems for the bridge. So, the engineers who built it constructed Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge to withstand winds up 180 miles per hour and an earthquake of 8.5 on the Richter scale.
Named one of the "Seven Wonders of the Modern World" by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Golden Gate Bridge has the tallest suspension bridge towers in the United States. Each tower measures 726 feet above the water, and the bridge is 8,981 feet long. Originally opened in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge has played a critical role during the aftermath and evacuation in some of the San Francisco Bay Area's many earthquakes.
At the time it was completed in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Measuring 3,460 feet long, it was the first suspension bridge to ever use a steel cable wire. However, the bridge was not without its problems. A cable broke, an explosion damaged a caisson and men died during the construction. But despite these issues, the bridge was completed by Washington Roebling 14 years after his father, John Roebling, had begun its construction.
