over story
The Eiffel Tower has a secret apartment hidden within its highest level. The apartment is owned by Gustave Eiffel—the engineer who designed the tower. In 1890, the year after the Eiffel Tower was opened, French writer Henri Girard, stated that Gustave Eiffel was an “object of general envy” among the citizens of Paris. This envy, according to Girard, was inspired not by the fame that Gustave gained as the creator of the tower, or the fortune the tower generated, but from the apartment he owned at the tower’s top. This apartment, which only Eiffel had access to, played host to many important visitors; prominent among them was Thomas Edison. Eiffel reportedly received several substantial offers for a single night in the apartment. The apartment, which had remained closed for several years, was recentlyopened to the public. Today, it contains mannequins of Eiffel and Edison. The lifelike wax models depicted the scene where Eiffel and his daughter Claire welcomed Edison. Also engraved on the Eiffel Tower are the names of the 72 scientists and engineers that designed it.
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The Sphinx’s Missing Beard We’ve already talked about how we almost lost the Sphinx and the mystery behind its missing nose. However, only a few people know the story behind its beard. The Sphinx was not originally constructed with a beard. Instead, it was attached long after it was constructed. It was added probably to relate the Sphinx with Horemakhet—one of the Egyptian gods. It may also have been intended for the Sphinx take after the Egyptian pharaohs, who often wore artificial beards as asymbol of authority, and to associate them with the god Osiris. One-thirtieth of the beard is currently in the British museum. It was presented to the museum by the Italian Egyptologist Giovanni Caviglia, who excavated parts of the Sphinx in 1817, when it was almost completely covered in sand. Several other parts of the Sphinx’s beard were also found between 1925 and 1926 when sand was excavated from the Sphinx again.
The Golden Gate Bridge Color Crisis The Golden Gate Bridge holds the record as the most photographed bridge in the world. Interestingly, the US Navy never wanted the bridge to be built because they feared that if the bridge was bombed and destroyed, it would trap their ships docked in the San Francisco Bay. The Navy later gave their consent to the construction of the bridge. However, they did not like the color that the bridge was going to be painted. They, along with the Army, wanted the bridge to be painted in black and yellow stripes so that it would be visible in the fog. However, the bridge’s architect, Irving Morrow, had a different plan. When the steel to be used for the bridge arrived in San Francisco, it was already painted with a base coat to prepare the steel for more paint. Back then, most bridges were coated in grey, brown, and black, but Morrow had it painted in “international orange,” similar to the color of the base coat. Not only is international orange visible in fogs, it also complements and contrasts with the blues of the sky and the bay.
Mount Rushmore Time Capsule While it is well-known that Mount Rushmore is incomplete, few people know about its time capsule. While building Rushmore, its chief architect Gutzon Borglum wanted to create a large hall which would serve as a grand room where all of the important documents in American history would be kept. He thought adding important documents and charters like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution would make the already outstanding monument more significant. Unfortunately, he was hindered by a lack of money and space until he died in 1941, leaving the work incomplete. In 1998, the Constitution, 16 porcelain enamel panels containing the text from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights along with a memoir of Borglum, and the stories about the presidents sculpted into the mountain were placed in a titanium vault and sealed inside the unfinished hall. These documents are to be left sealed and untouched for thousands of years. 05 Nation March 21, 2015
And All They See Is Red
By: Meraal M. Hakeem
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tory time
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