Word: monumental
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...Milligan is the director of President Lincoln's Cottage, a Gothic Revival mansion on a breezy hill a few miles from the White House, where Lincoln and his family sought relief from the summer heat during the Civil War. The cottage and its surrounding buildings were made a national monument in 2000, and in preparation for its opening last year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation carried out a multimillion-dollar renovation. But preservationists didn't just restore the buildings. They greened them, beginning with the Beaux Arts house next door that now serves as a visitors' center. Renovators kept...
...Hicks House Library is the only House library restricted to House residents, but do not despair. It is possible to sneak in, and well worth it. Not only is the library unique for possessing 10 small study rooms lining two winding staircases, but it is also a standing monument to Harvard history. Sketches and photographs of Harvard presidents from Eliot to Conant hang in one study room. An original sketch of Walden Pond by Thoreau’s hand hangs on the wall of another. The photographs of all of Kirkland’s past House masters line the staircases...
...endangered species such as the San Joaquin kit fox. He is also concerned about the effect on dwindling water supplies as well as the more intangible treasures of the area: the unimpeded views, the stark silence, the rustic natural beauty, the huge wilderness area called the Carrizo Plain National Monument just down the valley - that is, just about everything that led him to buy the property 10 years ago. (Read a story on mapping the best solar-energy sites...
...analysis, he identified 165 separate points on the monument, and linked them to astrological phenomenon like the two solstices and equinoxes and lunar and solar eclipses. It's a difficult theory to disprove completely and some evidence is persuasive - at dawn on the summer solstice, for example, the center of the Stonehenge ring, two nearby stones (The Slaughter and Heel Stones) and the sun all seem to align. Still, critics of Hawkins' theory say he gives the ancient builders too much credit, arguing they wouldn't have had the sophistication or precision necessary to predict all the astrological events Hawkins...
...more legitimate attempts at a Stonehenge explanation. In the 12th Century, the legend of King Arthur wasn't completely regarded as fiction. In his account of Stonehenge, historian Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that troops tried to move the stones from Ireland to England in order to provide a monument for their war dead. When they couldn't, they enlisted the help of the wizard Merlin to transport the massive stones - some weighing as much as 50 tons - back to Britain before arranging them in the current configuration...