Today in History

September 11, 1941
Bittersweet Anniversary
By today's standards, the Pentagon was built at warp speed. Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell, an engineer who headed the War Department's construction division, solicits plans, on July 17, 1941, from two of his subordinates for a building not more than four stories high to house 40,000 workers (the growing War Department work force numbered more than 24,000 and were scattered across 17 buildings at the time). He receives a layout the following Monday. Construction begins on September 11 of that same year and is completed 16 months later. The September 11, 2001, attack on the structure happens sixty years to the day after the groundbreaking.



Today's Feature History Article

Uncommon Valor

When two Naval officers entered the inferno of the Pentagon's west flank to search for survivors, they put their own lives on the line




 



Advertisement