I forgot to mention something in my New York Trip Diary, but it’s just a little thing – no need to make an entire volume of it. I was just going to talk about how much my husband and I enjoyed seeing the Empire State Building. We didn’t go up into it, but we passed by right next to it while riding a bus, and of course we also saw it looming over the NY skyline since it is once again New York’s tallest building after the collapse of the World Trade Center. The Empire State Building actually wasn’t quite as tall as I would have thought, but the architecture is what I noticed. The building has limestone panels on the outside, and it looked much different than the steel skyscrapers (like the Sears Tower and the John Hancock building) I am used to being a native Chicagoan. The Empire State Building was completed in 1931 after only 410 days of construction. It was finished during the worst of the Great Depression, and as a result, no one wanted to rent office space for its first few years of existence – leading to its nickname, “The Empty State Building”. Five people were killed in its construction; including a worker who committed suicide because he was laid off. In a macabre example of foreshadowing for the city of New York, the Empire State Building was hit by an airplane in 1945. The crash happened between the 79th and 80th floors and killed 14 people. One of the plane’s engines shot through the building and out the other side, where it landed a block away on the roof of a building and started a fire. The Empire State Building’s elevator operator survived a fall of 75 stories inside the elevator and her record for ‘longest survived fall in an elevator’ still exists today. Here is a picture of the accident:
So anyway, fascinating building with a lot of history. I just found it really cool to see an old-school skyscraper up close!
And since we were on the subject of the Sears Tower earlier, here is a video of lightning striking it – which I understand happens pretty often. If only they could harness that energy for human consumption…
Wow… and I thought you were going to enlighten us with a forgotten adventure. I loved the view from the ESB on my previous trips to the city… breathtaking. But don’t think we would have been able to take the trip this time. I have also heard that the Sears Tower is a veritable lightning rod
Youtube video no workie, but adblock left a tab so I could at least see the youtube link to go to it manually. Of course you meant the Willis Tower when you said Sears Tower… It will always be Sears Tower to me though, just like we still have Rosemont Horizon and Cominskey Park (I didn’t mention the team, just the field!). 8^)
Hmmm, the youtube video works on my comp, what’s up with that? And I know what you mean. Although I don’t much talk about Comisky Park, whenever we pass by, I call it the Rosemont Horizon. Good to hear that it happens even to locals.
Hmm. It works in IE but not Firefox… I wonder if something changed to affect it- I’ll see if past videos I have posted myself work.
Hmm. Working again. Seeing that it was affecting my page as well I disabled adblock, restarted Firefox and it worked. I re-enabled adblock and planned to tweak its settings- restarted Firefox again, and it still worked- no tweaking necessary. Just a browser glitch then.
Good to know. I was worried that all videos on youtube were getting stingy about embedding ever since I tried to embed the Susan Boyle video – but I think it was just because that clip was property of a tv show.
I just read where the producers blew a chance to earn money off of that clip too by arguing ad terms with Google for the past week. 😀
speaking of clips… has anyone heard about the disgraced Illinois politician who is going to be seen on some reality show?
Last I heard the judge said no. Has that changed? I’m a day behind on the news.
YES! Saw a clip of him on a morning show – thanking the judge who said he couldn’t travel to Costa Rica for saving him from eating bugs. Yeah, right! I think he’s full of it! I can’t believe that show is still on!
I read it in ther paper tonight, but was a bit confused… something about him being filmed in front of a green sceen with his hair being blown around.
Ok… I see, he filmed a promotional shot for the series. Apparently, a show I don’t have time for and glad for it!