Life and Events
On a typical weekday 50,000 people worked in the towers with another 200,000 passing through as visitors. The complex was so large that it had its own zip code: 10048. The towers offered expansive views from the observation deck atop the South Tower and the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the North Tower. The Twin Towers became known worldwide, appearing in numerous movies and television shows as well as on postcards and other merchandise, and became seen as a New York icon, in the same league as the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty.
French high wire acrobatic performer Philippe Petit walked between the towers on a tightrope in 1974, as shown in the documentary film Man on Wire.
Brooklyn toymaker George Willig scaled the exterior of the south tower in 1977. In 1983, on Memorial Day, high-rise firefighting and rescue advocate Dan Goodwin successfully climbed the outside of the WTC's North Tower. His stunt was meant to call attention to the inability to rescue people potentially trapped in the upper floors of skyscrapers.
The 1995 PCA world chess championship was played on the 107th floor of the South Tower.
Read more about this topic: Top Of The World Trade Center Observatories
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or events:
“The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man. On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)