Mount Rushmore is a United States presidential memorial that
represents the first 150 years of the history of the United States of
America with the 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of former U.S. Presidents
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham
Lincoln. The entire memorial covers 1,278 acres (5.17 km²), and is
5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level. It is managed by the National
Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the
Interior. The memorial attracts around 2 million people annually. The
mountain known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, was renamed
after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, in 1885. The
project of carving Mount Rushmore originally started with the purpose
of increasing tourism in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. After
long negotiations involving a Congressional delegation and President
Calvin Coolidge, the project received Congressional approval. Under
the direction of sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the carving started in 1927
and ended in 1941.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1768:
The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopædia_Britannica)
1917:
Halifax Explosion: A ship in Halifax Harbour carrying trinitrotoluene
(TNT) and picric acid caught fire after a collision with another ship
and exploded, devastating Halifax, Canada.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion)
1922:
The Irish Free State came into existence, one year after the signing
of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Free_State)
1957:
Project Vanguard: An attempt to launch the first American satellite
failed with an explosion on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Vanguard)
1989:
Marc Lépine killed 14 women in the École Polytechnique Massacre in
Montreal.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_massacre)
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Wikiquote of the day:
Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think
that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.
-- Anthony Trollope
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope)