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White Elephant
White Elephant
The expressions "white elephant" and "gift of a white elephant" came into common
use in the middle of the nineteenth century.[7] The phrase was attached to "whi
te elephant swaps" and "white elephant sales" in the early twentieth century.[8]
Many church bazaars held white elephant sales where donors could unload unwanted
bric-a-brac, generating profit from the phenomenon that one man s trash is another
man s treasure. Many organizational and church fairs still use the term today. In
general use a white elephant usually refers to an item that s not useful (decorativ
e) but may be expensive and odd.
Examples of alleged white elephant projects[edit]
De Witte Olifant, (The White Elephant), one of the ships of Cornelis Tromp. Pain
ting in the Trompenburg
Numerous airport projects including
Ciudad Real Airport, just south of Madrid[9]
Castelln-Costa Azahar Airport north of Valencia and the Huesca-Pirineos Airport,
both currently have no scheduled commercial flights.[10]
Montral-Mirabel International Airport, North America's largest airport[11]
Lambert-St. Louis International Airport runway 11/29 [12] [13][14]
The New South China Mall was the largest mall in the world, conceived to accommo
date 100,000 visitors a day, but because of poor planning it has been 99% empty
since opening. [15]
The U.S. Navy's Alaska-class cruisers were described as "white elephants" becaus
e by the time they were commissioned the Japanese heavy cruisers that they were
designed to hunt down had already been destroyed.[16]
Hughes H-4 Hercules (or "Spruce Goose"), often called Howard Hughes' white eleph
ant before and during the Senate War Investigating Committee. Hughes' associate
Noah Dietrich called it a "plywood white elephant".[17]
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is being increasingly viewed as a "white elephant"
by the U.S. military, due to its price of $380 billion for nearly 2,500 aircraf
t in three differing versions, to equip nine nations' air forces, along with low
er performance than originally anticipated. [18] The lifetime cost of the F-35 p
rogram has since been estimated by the Pentagon at $1.45 trillion.[19]
Several stadium projects, including
The Stadio delle Alpi .[20][21][22]
Olympic Stadium in Montreal [23] The French-language term "gros bol de toilette"
has also been applied as a pejorative.
The stadiums built in South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup [24][25][26][27]
Christ's Hospital railway station was constructed at great expense in 1902 to ac
commodate Christ's Hospital school, a large independent school that had relocate
d from London to the West Sussex countryside. It was envisaged that the station
would be busy due to the 850 pupils regularly using it, and also the foreseen we
stward expansion of the nearby town of Horsham. However, the railway company did
not realise that the school is a boarding school,[citation needed], and the dev
elopment of Horsham did not materialise.
The Temple of Olympian Zeus in ancient Greece was intended to be the biggest tem
ple of its time, but due to its high construction costs and human power demands,
the temple remain unfinished for many centuries. Its construction was finally c
ompleted during the Roman times 638 years after the project had begun.[28][addit
ional citation needed]
The Sagrada Famlia church in Barcelona has been viewed for many years as a monume
ntal white elephant.[29] Construction started in 1882 and the church still remai
ns under construction. The lack of funds, the death of the architect Antoni Gaud,
the Spanish Civil War and the complexity of the project led to delays and inter
ruptions over the years. Completion is not expected until at least 2026, althoug
h it functions as a church and tourist attraction in the meantime.
The City of Culture of Galicia in Spain is a complex of buildings designed by a
group of architects led by the American architect Peter Eisenman, exceed its ori
ginal planned budget by four times, and in 2013 fourteen years after the project
set up, construction was halted.The final two planned buildings out of six rema
in unfinished.[30]
Several incomplete or poorly functioning dams, such as the Bujagali dam (Uganda)
[31] and Epupa dam (Angola).[32] Most were constructed by foreign companies in t
he interest of foreign aid.[33] Although the buildings do not meet expectations,
if construction is completed or restarted, they could still provide a contribut
ion to the local population.[34]
Brisbane, Australia's Clem Jones Tunnel. The operating company Rivercity motorwa
ys posted a A$1.67 billion loss in 2010, largely due to overly optimistic traffi
c projections. Despite cutting tolls by up to 50% traffic volumes are less than
half of the projected 60,000 vehicles a day.[35] However it is expected that mot
orists will become accustomed to this project much like other infrastructure pro
jects, such as the Gateway Bridge, that were once considered white elephants.
The Russky Bridge was built across the Eastern Bosphorus strait, to serve the As
ia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting that took place in 2012.[36] The bridge
connects the mainland part of Vladivostok with the meeting venue on Russky Islan
d. The world's then-longest cable-stayed bridge terminates in a dead end on the
island
whose population of 5,000 lack access to telephones, public lighting and
mains water
and was completed at a cost believed to have exceeded $1 billion USD
: the total bill has not been published.[37]
The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway (CGB), a public transit project in East Anglia,
whose high construction costs far exceed even the most optimistic projections o
f revenue. Because the 50,000 tons of concrete used to build the busway is itsel
f white, the project is often referred to as a white elephant.[38][39]
See also[edit]
Bridge to nowhere
Pork barrel
References[edit]
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25 April 2013.
Jump up ^ "Royal Elephant Stable". Thai Elephant Conservation Center.
^ Jump up to: a b Leider, Jacques P. (December 2011). "A Kingship by Merit and C
osmic Investiture". Journal of Burma Studies 15 (2).
Jump up ^ Morelle, Rebecca (20 March 2009). "Science & Environment | Pink elepha
nt is caught on camera". BBC News. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Jump up ^ "The Birth of Buddha | The New Kadampa Tradition (la)". Kadampa.org. Re
trieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ Harding, Les (1999). Elephant Story: Jumbo and P.T. Barnum Under the B
ig Top. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 110. ISBN 0786406321.
Jump up ^ Brown, Peter Jensen. "Two-and-a-half Idioms - the History and Etymolog
y of "White Elephants"". Early Sports 'n' Pop-Culture History Blog. Retrieved 25
June 2014.
Jump up ^ Brown, Peter Jensen. "Two-and-a-Half More Idioms - "White Elephants" a
nd Yankee Swaps". Early Sports 'n' Pop-Culture History Blog. Retrieved 3 July 20
14.
Jump up ^ "The white elephants that dragged Spain into the red". BBC. 27 July 20
12.
Jump up ^ Govan, Fiona (5 October 2011). "Spain's white elephants
how country's
airports lie empty". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 7 January 2013.
Jump up ^ Krauss, Clifford (3 October 2004). "End of Era Near in Montreal for Wh
ite-Elephant Airport". New York Times. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
Jump up ^ "The Expansion Story". Archived from the original on 5 June 2007. Retr
ieved 25 July 2007.
Jump up ^ "Historical Operation Statistics by Class for the Years: 1985 2006". Arc
hived from the original on 11 July 2007. Retrieved 25 July 2007.
Jump up ^ "New $1 billion runway opens this week, but it's not needed anymore".
USA Today. 11 April 2006. Retrieved 25 July 2007.
Jump up ^ Taylor, Adam (5 March 2013). "New South China Mall: Tour A Ghost Mall"
. Business Insider. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Jump up ^ Morison, Samuel Loring; Morison, Samuel Eliot; Polmar, Norman (2005).
Illustrated Directory of Warships of the World: From 1860 to the Present. ABC-CL