Capitol under fire since 1814
LAHORE: The American Senate and therefore the country's House of Representatives (Congress), which pass laws at the 227-year-old US Capitol in Washington DC, have suffered attacks on various occasions since 1814.
A research shows that the 288-foot-high US Capitol is that the location where American presidents deliver their annual State of the Union addresses, but it's also been the location of Sunday religious services, governmental functions, violence within the sort of fire, break-ins, fistfights and shootings.
According to American media houses, when the Capitol was expanded within the 1850s, a number of the development labour was administered by slaves who would cut the logs, lay the stones and baked the bricks.
According to some American government websites, to reconstruct the legislative building with an equivalent materials and workmanship today, it might cost over $1 billion. that's 135 times quite the first cost incurred!
Much like the recently-witnessed attack on this historic building by armed and violent pro-Trump supporters, non-members of Congress are guilty of firing weapons or planting bombs within the vicinity of the building, whose constructed area comprises of quite 173 million pounds of stone, brick, concrete and steel.
This is aside from the varied duels and physical fights between American lawmakers. consistent with numerous American government websites and internationally-acknowledged website, history.com, fire had damaged the US Capitol in 1814, because the 1812 war was still ongoing .
Capitol building construction history:
The website states: "The ruins of the US Capitol following British attempts to burn the building; includes fire damage to the Senate and House wings, damaged colonnade within the House of Representatives shored up with firewood to stop its collapse, and therefore the shell of the rotunda with the facade and roof missing. Construction of the Capitol formally began on September 18, 1793, when President Washington laid the primary cornerstone. Enslaved Black people performed the particular construction of the Capitol. Congress began using the building in 1800, the year the federal moved its operations from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. Like many of the primary federal buildings in D.C., the Capitol’s design was supported 19th-century neoclassical style, inspired by Ancient Greek and Roman architecture ."
It adds: "The Capitol’s construction continued until the War of 1812, when the country’s wartime mobilization forced it to a halt. A year into the conflict between the us and therefore the British Empire , American troops set fire to a capital in colonial Canada. In retaliation, British troops in 1814 burned federal buildings in Washington, D.C. -- including the White House and therefore the Capitol."
History.com holds: "The fire didn’t completely destroy the Capitol, but it damaged enough of it that some members of Congress suggested relocating the federal back to Philadelphia or find another city. Instead, workers rebuilt the Capitol and continued to expand it because the number of states -- and their representatives in Congress -- grew (today, it covers over 1.5 million square feet and has quite 600 rooms."
In 1856, Senator Charles Sumner was beaten with a cane on the ground of the us Senate by Preston Smith Brooks, a robust advocate of slavery.
US Capitol cops , Gibson and Chestnut, were killed on July 24, 1998 when a person called Russell Weston had opened fire inside the building after running through metal detectors at the door. Weston was later charged on July 26 for the murder of two officers during the shooting rampage.
Moreover, in July 1915, a former German professor at Harvard, Erich Muenter, had planted a package containing three sticks of dynamite within the Capitol near the Senate room .
The website under review reveals: "The German-born man later wrote a letter to a Washington, D.C. newspaper saying he had planted the explosives to protest US wartime aid to Britain and said he hoped the detonation would "make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamour for war.”
In 1954, four Puerto Rican Americans fired guns within the House of Representatives, injuring five congressmen. The attackers said they acted to demand independence for the US territory of Puerto Rico.
In 1971, a bomb exploded within the Capitol . While the explosion didn't injure anyone, it caused some $300,000 in damage. a gaggle calling itself the Weather Underground claimed to be behind the bombing and said it had been in protest of the continued US-supported bombing of Laos. History.com said: Some 13 years later, on November 7, 1983, a bomb tore through the second floor of the Senate wing of the Capitol. It caused an estimated $250,000 in damage
