Commentary Ticker
- When in Rome… Make Better Concrete: How An Ancient Mix Beats Today’s Best
June 18, 2013 | 10:40 pmFrom the Hoover Dam and the Burj Khalifa to the Panama Canal, concrete underlies the greatest of modern architectural achievements. But modern concrete, it seems, doesn’t hold a candle to Ancient Rome’s. A little history for you: the Romans were the first to engineer concrete in mass, and it was upon this concrete that they [...]
- Google Wants Balloon Internet for Everybody
June 15, 2013 | 11:06 am“Balloons. That’s right. Balloons,” says the voice of a young girl in a video for Google’s latest endeavor: bringing the world online with massive balloons. The initiative, called Project Loon, comes from Google X, the experimental lab within the company whose sole purpose is to dream up big, borderline insane, ideas. Google X created self-driving [...]
- Watch Researchers Discover a Sunken Egyptian City
June 13, 2013 | 9:36 pmThonis, the legendary port city that served as an entryway to the Egyptian empire, was long considered to be a myth. The tales of its immense power and vast riches conflicted with the evidence of its existence—mainly that there was none. Cities of such grandeur do not typically disappear off the face of the earth. [...]
- “I Am The Nucleus” and Other Bizarre Quotes By Kanye West
June 12, 2013 | 10:06 amKanye West says the darndest things. On his unrelenting quest to become his own species of hip-hop artist, he has established a reputation as irreverent, controversial, and unapologetic. Though he makes time for public grandstanding by claiming a US President “doesn’t care about black people” or interrupting the VMAs, he remains mostly quiet when it [...]
- 50 Charities, 10 Years, $1 Billion Wasted
June 11, 2013 | 12:38 pmIn Holiday, Florida, sits a warehouse. From the outside, it looks like nothing special, but as a joint investigative report from the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered, inside is one of the most useless charity in America: Kids Wish Network. For every dollar it raises, a mere 3 cents goes [...]
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The Destruction and Reconstruction of the White House
Nearly burnt to the ground in 1814, the White House had seen some tough times. But by the Truman administration, it was nearly on its last leg. In 1948, facing the stresses of modern innovations—e.g., indoor plumbing—the building was near the point of collapse. Indeed, as a Congressional survey found, even its marquee features like a marble grand staircase were threatened by disintegrating support. The report found the building in such bad shape, it even considered building a new mansion from scratch.
Truman, however, had other plans. Unwilling to destroy what he considered a national monument, he forced designers to completely gut the building. Every last square foot of the White House had to be dismantled. The walls stood, blocking the public from the grim internal scene, but even they were reinforced by new concrete columns.
The National Journal uncovered the photos and itself pieced together the story of the reconstruction:
“A bulldozer removing debris from the inside of the White House, during the renovation of the building. The bulldozer had to be taken apart and moved into the White House in pieces, as President Truman would not allow a hole large enough to fit the bulldozer to be cut into the walls of the White House.” (National Archives)
“View of the northeast corner of the White House during renovation. Workmen are installing reinforced steel for laying of the concrete roofs of the Fan Room and other rooms in this area.” (National Archives)
“To underscore the size of the massive new ventilation system being installed above the tunnel in the new White House basement, the photographer placed workmen inside the illuminated ductwork.” (National Archives)
“This photograph was taken from the east entrance of the lower corridor of the White House, looking west with the East Room above. The workmen are demolishing the walls of the lower corridor.” (National Archive)
Attribution
The National Journal