The name of the building of the US Department of Defense is known far beyond America's borders. Built in the shape of a regular pentagon, it was conventionally called the Pentagon, but this name quickly caught on and, since 1944, it began to be used even in official documents.
The regular pentagon of national security
The US Department of Defense is headquartered in Arlington County. The structure, which is popularly called the Pentagon, has the shape of a regular pentagon. It has five facades and seven floors, two of which go deep underground, and some of their premises have a strictly secret status.
The internal structure of the Pentagon is such that, thanks to the system of transitions, from one point of the building to another, even the most distant one, can be reached in seven minutes. The Pentagon is the largest office building in the world, serving 26,000 people. But for all its gigantic dimensions, it was built in record time - in just a year and a half. Construction was carried out from September 1941 to January 1943.
The building owes its shape to the peculiarities of the area where it was originally intended to be built. Several roads intersected there at an angle of 108 degrees - the angle of construction of a pentagon, the project fit perfectly into the existing transport infrastructure, but by decision of the US President, construction was moved downstream of the Potomac River, and the project was decided not to change.
Target of all time
During the so-called Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lasted from 1946 to 1991, in the Soviet press, the Pentagon pentagon was very often used to depict the image of the enemy, usually a caricature, and was familiar to every schoolchild who read the Crocodile magazines, “Around the World”or other periodicals. In the Pentagon itself, those times are also well remembered - for example, the employees call the central lawn of a pentagonal shape Ground Zero among themselves. It was believed that it was he who would serve as a target for the missiles that the USSR would release to America.
However, the pentagon was targeted by an American Airlines plane in September 2001. The Boeing hijacked by terrorists literally rammed the left wing of the Pentagon, where the command of the Naval Forces was then located. The aircraft's tanks contained 20 thousand liters of fuel, and its debris penetrated almost 100 meters deep into the building.
It is known that before the collision, the plane sank down so much that it even shot down several street lamps. All 64 people on the plane were killed, and only the steering wheel and flight recorder remained of the Boeing itself.
After the renovation, a memorial was created in the restored wing of the building, and a memorial park was laid out nearby in memory of the victims. And in the place where the Boeing crashed, a small chapel was created.