The most famous of these was the Empire State Building. It held the record as the world's b tallest building for over 40 years, longer than any building in modern history. Only ir after the end of the century did the tallest sl building appear outside North America with the opening in Taipei of the first building to be more than half a kilometer a tall, Taipei 101. However, all of these were to be dwarfed by the opening of the Burj t Khalifa in Dubai in 2010, which showed an T incredible 62% increase in height on the previous world's tallest building. Most new record holders had only ever shown an increase of between 5% and 20% Countries and cities have been competing with each other for centuries to hold records for the tallest structures. To many people tall buildings are a sign of