WASHINGTON MONUMENT:

DID YOU KNOW? THE Washington Monument, made of marble, granite and bluestone gneiss, is 555 feet and five inches tall, and at the time of its completion was the tallest building in the world. It remains the world’s tallest stone structure and the world’s tallest obelisk. IT first opened to the public in 1888, 103 years after it was first mooted, and is visited by more than 800,000 visitors each year. CONSTRUCTION halted at 152 feet in 1854 due to Civil War and lack of funding and resumed 13 years later. IT took Mormon missionaries three months to deliver the Utah tablet by ox cart to Washington but the white limestone block had to be replaced in the 1950’s due to deterioration and illegibility. THE Alaska stone was the last State stone to be included in the Washington monument in 1982. It is made from jade and is said to be worth $3 million. IN 1854, nine men from the antiimmigrant and anti-Catholic KnowNothing party stole the Pope’s stone-a gift from Pope Pius 1X and The Vatican – from the monument, smashed it into pieces and dumped it in the middle of the Potomac River. A JAPANESE memorial stone from Okinawa was finally installed in the Washington monument in 1989 after it emerged that the original stone donated in 1854, had never reached its destination. FOR ten hours in December 1982, the Washington Monument and eight tourists were held hostage by a nuclear arms protester, Norman Mayer, claiming to have explosives in a van he drove to the monument’s base. U.S. Park Police shot and killed Mayer. THE monument was damaged during the 2011 Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene the same year and was closed to the public for 32 months while it was being repaired. It was closed again in September 2016 and is expected to reopen to visitors in 2019.