People have been building stairs for so long that it’s difficult to say who first came up with the idea. One of the oldest surviving examples can be found in the ancient city of Jericho, where archaeologists discovered a stone tower dating back to around 8000 BC.
According to research published in the journal Antiquity, the structure stood more than eight meters tall and had a staircase built inside it. For people living thousands of years before modern construction equipment existed, that was a pretty impressive achievement.
Of course, staircase design has come a long way since then. Today, architects and engineers have the technology and materials to create some truly extraordinary structures. Take the Niesen Stairway in Switzerland, which was built in 1910 and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest staircase in the world.
It has a whopping 11,674 steps and climbs 1,669 meters (5,476 feet) up a mountain alongside a railway. Normally closed to the public, the staircase hosts an annual race where brave participants attempt to climb the whole thing!
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However, an elaborate design doesn’t necessarily make a staircase practical or safe. Even the most ordinary flight of stairs requires some careful planning, since the height and depth of each step affect how comfortably people can use it.
And despite thousands of years of architectural progress, falling down the stairs remains a remarkably common way to get injured. In fact, the numbers are quite frightening.
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In the US alone, more than a million people end up in emergency departments each year because of stair-related injuries.
A 2018 study published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine examined these injuries between 1990 and 2012. Researchers estimated that nearly 24.8 million people received medical treatment during those 23 years.
That’s an average of approximately 1.08 million patients annually, or roughly one person every 30 seconds. And those figures only account for injuries serious enough to result in an emergency department visit.
Interestingly, the same study found that 61.2% of stair-related injuries happened at home. So even a familiar staircase that someone has climbed hundreds of times deserves a little caution.
One misplaced foot or a moment of distraction is all it takes to turn an ordinary trip downstairs into a painful sprain or even a broken bone.
But some staircases are considered so dangerous that authorities have decided people shouldn’t be using them at all. One example is the famous Haʻikū Stairs in Hawaii, also known as the Stairway to Heaven.
Built during World War II, the nearly 4,000 steps climb a steep mountain ridge. Despite being closed to the public in 1987, the staircase continued attracting adventurous hikers. In 2024, officials began a $2.6 million project to remove it over safety concerns and persistent trespassing.
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