How tall is the London Eye?

The London Eye was originally named the Millennium Wheel, built in 1999 to celebrate the turn of the century. In fact it wasn't completed and ready to carry passengers in time for Millennium Eve but did take its first passengers early in 2000 (that is the commonly accepted turn of the century not the technically correct one which was 31st December 2000).

The London Eye receives more visitors per year than the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramids of Giza and you can see up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) in all directions from the top on a clear day (not so many clear days in the UK though!) The 32 capsules on the London Eye are said to be representative of the 32 London boroughs, and each one weighs as much as 1,052,631 pound coins.

Despite there only being 32 capsules, for superstitious reasons they are numbered 1 to 33, there is no capsule numbered 13 for the same reason may hotels don't have a 13th floor.

The London Eye can carry 800 people each rotation, which is comparable to the number of passengers on 11 London red double decker buses and capsules travel at a leisurely pace of 26cm per second, or just less than 1ft per second which all Londoners know is also the same speed as a London bus!

The London Eye was not the first large wheel erected in London, the Great Wheel, built for the Empire of India Exhibition in 1895 was smaller than the London Eye at 94m (308ft) and carried over 2.5 million passengers before being demolished in 1907.