Word: obelisk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...museum of Bergen-Belsen, one of the concentration camps where Holocaust victims were exterminated as part of Hitler's Final Solution. As the Reagans passed picture after picture of wretched inmates and naked corpses, they had trouble holding back their emotions. Proceeding to an 80-ft. gray stone obelisk that towers above the camp's mounded mass graves, Reagan spoke huskily of Bergen-Belsen's dead, who include Dutch Schoolgirl Anne Frank. Then he sounded his uplifting theme: "We are here today to confirm that the horror cannot outlast hope...
Park police quickly cleared the area. Trapped inside the 555-ft.-high obelisk were eight people: six tourists and two U.S. Park Service employees. Shortly after noon, Associated Press Reporter Steve Komarow was selected as the emissary. Over the course of the next six hours, Komarow was to talk cautiously on five occasions with Mayer, whose vague but grandiose demand was that every organization in the U.S., from Kiwanis Clubs to Congress, give first priority, and the news media 51% of their total coverage, to discussing the "nuclear weapons question...
...could have headed for the White House." At 2:25 p.m., Mayer allowed the hostages inside the monument to leave. As dusk settled, he seemed prepared to spend the night. Suddenly, just after 7:20, the van lurched away from the monument, sheering off a flagpole next to the obelisk. A volley of shots from police marksmen rang out; the truck swerved and tipped over...
...still unbuilt, was smothered in epithets like "instant Stone-henge" and "bookends out of a deep freeze." Not until next spring, incredibly, will Washington get its first monument to General Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I. Those bothered by abstract design might consider that grand obelisk, the Washing ton Monument. We have come to love it. Some day the Viet Nam memorial, too, may win the hearts and minds of the American people...
...that. Now, whenever the weather permits, the audiences are held outdoors in the square. Tickets, given out free by the Vatican as long as the supply lasts, are still needed by those who wish to occupy the rows of chairs and benches set up in front of the central obelisk facing the basilica. Large areas of the immense 20-acre square, however, are left open for anyone who can jam in through the encircling Bernini colonnade that the architect likened to arms of the church reaching out in love to embrace the world...