The Pentagon - International symbol of military might

It has been called the largest low rise office building in the world and also a city on to itself. The pentagon building in Washington D.C. is one of the most immediately recognizable buildings on earth. The idea for the building was conceived in July of 1941. In a twist of irony the ground breaking ceremony to begin constuction occured on September 11th, 1941. The designers played around with more than a few ideas about what the building would look like before they settled on the familiar pentagon shape. Originally it was going to be a square building with just one of its corners cut off to accomadate a nearby road but they dropped this idea because it would make the building look lop sided on one side and the designers thought that was unattractive. Another design was that the building would be totally circular. That it would be 4 rings radiating out from a smaller core ring. This idea was well liked from an asthetic point of view but it proved to be too difficult to implement. Its very hard for construction engineers to build round walls as it turns out because you have to keep changing the angle of the wall being built as you build it so this idea was done away with too and finally the pentagon shape was settled on and construction began.
Early on there was some debate about what they were going to call it. Initially it was going to be called the National Defense Building. Then that got changed to the Pentagonal Building. People started calling it the Pentagon for short and so after a little while the name was officially changed. Over the years there have been moves to change its name yet again. When Dwight Eisenhower died in 1969 there was a brief ground swell by some members of Congress to rename the Pentagon in his honor but it went nowhere. When Ronald Reagan died in 2004 there was a similar move by then Senator Bill Frist in the House to name the building after him. This went nowhere either.
The building originally took only a total of 16 months to complete. It in fact was occupied and operating long before it was completed due to the outbreak of World War 2 just three months after the initial ground breaking. Each side wall of the Pentagon is one fifth of a mile long with reinforced concrete and steel construction. It is so big in fact that some members of the military establishment who go there to work for the first time are often assigned a guide to help them get around the building and avoid getting lost because of all of its confusing corridors and hallways. The Building had a little bit of luck on September 11th, 2001 when it was struck by an airliner in the terror attacks. The plane hit the Pentagon on the only side of the building that had recently been upgraded and that side wall had been further reinforced and had also recieved new blast proof windows. It is believed this fact helped keep down the number of dead and injured during the attack to the somewhat low number of 184. These casualties are often referred to as the forgottten victims of 9-11. After the attack the building was totally restored and all the damage repaired within one year. Today it continues to be the work place for over 23000 employees both military and civilian and over 3000 non defence support personel.