Why washington monument was built

That same year, an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic activist group called the Know Nothings became angry that Pope Pius IX had donated a block of stone from the ancient Roman Temple of Concord for the monument.

They confiscated the stone and then seized possession of the monument project. They did little work on the structure and disbanded within several years, but construction remained on hold through the Civil War. By this time, architectural tastes had changed and the pantheon at the base of the obelisk was deleted from the plan.

As a result, the monument is two different shades; lighter at the bottom and darker at the top. Construction wrapped up in , and the project was dedicated the following year. On December 8, , a year-old Navy veteran, Norman Mayer, drove his van to the base of the monument and threatened to blow up the structure with 1, pounds of dynamite he claimed to have inside his vehicle.

A group of tourists was trapped inside the monument for several hours before Mayer, who was trying to draw attention to his stance against nuclear weapons, let them leave. Meanwhile, thousands of workers from nearby buildings were evacuated, streets were shut down and air traffic in the area was diverted. In , the Washington National Monument Society ran out of money 7 years after the cornerstone was laid.

When the Vatican donated a stone, the Know Nothings, a conservative anti-Catholic political party, objected and stole the block. Construction stopped in Capped with a wooden roof, the partially finished obelisk sat unchanged for nearly 20 years. In , Congress, agreed that "at this the beginning of the second century of national existence, [we] do assume and direct the completion of the Washington Monument.

When construction resumed, new stones for the Monument came from new quarries. In , white marble from a different Maryland quarry combined with granite from several quarries in New England to create stones that completed the Monument. Once finished in , the stones appeared to be the same color. A federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the United States and England when it came out in Three years earlier, its serialization in an American review had been cut short by the U.

Post Office for the Altamont, a new music festival in Northern California, was the brainchild of the Rolling Stones, who hoped to cap off their U. Unlike Woodstock, however, which was A guard, who had been shot by brothers Frank, William, and Simeon Reno during a train robbery in May, dies of his wounds.

His death so infuriated the public that a group of vigilantes yanked the three brothers from their Indiana jail cell five days later and hanged them.

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