Spyke

Fun fact non-Americans (and some Americans) might not know: it's a different color partway through because they had to stop construction for over 20 years due to budgetary problems and other factors (like, eventually, the Civil War). So it began in 1848 and was completed in 1884.

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lemmy.world

Other fun facts:

  • It was originally supposed to be Washington on a horse
  • At its completion it was the tallest man made structure in the world
  • It remains the largest free-standing masonry structure in the world
  • The 2.85kg aluminum cap cost about $7500 in 2026 USD. At the current price of aluminum it would be about $10

Source

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lemmy.dbzer0.com

other factors (like, eventually, the Civil War)

Speaking of, wasn't it built by slaves? I imagine that they switch to carceral slavery after chattel slavery was outlawed rather than going with something as woke as voluntary labor 😛

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lemmy.world

Actually, while we'll likely never know for certain, it's quite debatable for the first phase, and we're reasonably certain it wasn't used for the second phase.

There's no "yes" or "no" to this question; even the historians collectively don't know. (Although if "built by slaves" is implying exclusively or near-exclusively, that's definitively wrong.)

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lemmy.dbzer0.com

Amazing, historians will be like, I don’t know, for something that took place less than 200 years ago but then act like they know shit about the pyramids being built.

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It's almost like things are not all recorded equally. And historians also don't actually know full how the pyramids were built either, hell we don't truly know whether the pyramids were built with slaves either.

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Thanks for using the original rather than the reversed one that's more commonly used.

It's much funnier this way around IMO 😁

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I think the halo means they are from Blue Archive? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

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