{"id":13129,"date":"2015-08-02T05:15:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T09:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=13129"},"modified":"2021-03-22T21:59:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T01:59:16","slug":"15-things-you-might-not-know-about-the-washington-monument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=13129","title":{"rendered":"15 Things You Might Not Know About the Washington Monument"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2015\/z080215washingtonmonument_trivia.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Michael Arbeiter<\/strong>&nbsp;and <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Mental_Floss<\/strong><\/a> present <strong>15 Things You Might Not Know About the Washington Monument<em>.<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp; Here are three of my favorites&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>1. Building a monument to George Washington was not a unanimously supported proposition.<br \/>\n<\/strong>Today, trumpeting George Washington as a hero and a symbol of national pride isn\u2019t going to start any arguments. In the 19th century, however, Washington\u2019s approval rating was far from 100 percent. The very idea of constructing a monument to honor the former president felt like an affront to the Democratic-Republicans\u2014the opposing party to the Washington-aligned Federalists\u2014who both favored Thomas Jefferson over Washington and decried such tributes as unseemly and suspiciously Royalist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. IT TOOK ALMOST 40 YEARS TO COMPLETE CONSTRUCTION.<\/strong><br \/>\nAfter decades of deliberation about where to build a monument to Washington, what form it should take, and whether the whole thing was a good idea in the first place, the foundation for a great stone obelisk was laid at the center of Washington, D.C.\u2019s National Mall on July 4, 1848. Although the design looks fairly simple, the structure would prove to be a difficult project for architect Robert Mills and the Washington National Monument Society. Due to ideological conflicts, lapses in funding, and disruptions during the Civil War, construction of the Washington Monument would not be completed until February 21, 1885. The site opened to the public three years later.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>8. THE ENGINEER WHO COMPLETED THE MONUMENT ASKED THE GOVERNMENT TO SUPPLY HIS WORKERS WITH HOT COFFEE.<\/b><br \/>\nSeveral years after the 1855 death of Mills, Col. Thomas Lincoln Casey Sr., Chief of Engineers of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, assumed responsibility for completing the Washington Monument. Among his most memorable orders was an official request to the U.S. Treasury Department to supply his workers\u2014specifically those assigned to the construction of the monument\u2019s apex\u2014with \u201chot coffee in moderate quantities.\u201d The treasury complied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Arbeiter&nbsp;and Mental_Floss present 15 Things You Might Not Know About the Washington Monument.&nbsp; Here are three of my favorites&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13129"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26883,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13129\/revisions\/26883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}