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Pentagon Facts

Pentagon Facts
The Pentagon is an enormous building complex in Arlington, Virginia that was built to house the U.S. Department of War. Construction of the building began on September 11th, 1941, after having been designed by an American architect George Bergstrom. The Pentagon was built to solve a space problem for the War Department, which was spread out in a number of different buildings. With the outbreak of World War II the department needed to be better organized. The shape of the Pentagon was chosen because of its size requirements and height restrictions, as well as the site. On January 15th, 1943 the Pentagon was completed at a cost of $83 million.
Interesting Pentagon Facts:
Today the Pentagon houses offices for the United States Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Army, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
The Pentagon was built in only 16 months.
It is the largest low-rise office building in the world, with more than 17 miles of hallways. The building's area is 11.74 hectares.
The Pentagon has 131 stairways, 284 washrooms, 4,200 clocks, 19 escalators, and 691 water fountains within its walls.
There is enough telephone wire in the Pentagon to wrap around the circumference of the earth 4.5 times.
There are 200 acres of grounds for the Pentagon.
The Pentagon has 16 parking lots and can hold approximately 8,770 cars.
More than 106,000 people visit the Pentagon each year for tours.
On September 11th, 2001, flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. This was considered to be a terrorist attack which took place on the same day that the World Trade Center's Twin Towers were attacked by two airplanes.
The attack on September 11th, 2001 was exactly 60 years after the day that construction of the Pentagon began.
As many as 13,000 people were working on the construction of the Pentagon at one time.
Originally the Pentagon's design included only three floors but two more floors were added in preparation for war.
The final cost was $83 million, which would be approximately $1.33 billion today.
The Pentagon has five sides, which is why it was called the Pentagon.
The Pentagon houses offices, storage, concessions, snack bars, cafeterias, banks, a subway station, bus platform, and a variety of stores.
The Pentagon has a five-acre center courtyard that is enclosed by five sides.
The Pentagon has more than seven acres of windows.
There are 16,250 light fixtures in the Pentagon. Approximately 250 light bulbs have to be changed each day in the Pentagon.
The Pentagon was named a National Historic Landmark in 1992 because of its history and unique architecture.
189 people died on September 11th, 2001 when flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. The section that the plane hit was only partially occupied because it had been recently renovated. Had it been fully occupied many more people would have been killed.
Following the September 11th attacks the Pentagon underwent an extensive renovation project called the Phoenix Project. The cost was five times the original construction cost, coming in at $5 billion. It was completed in February 2003.


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