History
In 1951, work commenced on creating a cast bronze memorial based on the photo, with the figures 32 feet (9.8 m) tall and the flagpole 60 feet (18 m) long. The granite base of the memorial bears two inscriptions:
- "In honor and memory of the men of the United States Marine Corps who have given their lives to their country since 10 November 1775"
- "Uncommon Valor Was a Common Virtue." This is a tribute by Admiral Chester Nimitz to the fighting men on Iwo Jima.
The location and date of every major Marine Corps engagement up to the present are inscribed around the base of the memorial. The base is made entirely in the deep black diabase of Lönsboda, a small town and a quarry in the southernmost province of Sweden.
The memorial was officially dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on November 10, 1954, the 179th anniversary of the Marine Corps. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued a proclamation that a Flag of the United States should fly from the memorial 24 hours a day, one of the few official sites where this is required.
The Marines of Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C. use the memorial as a centerpiece of the weekly Sunset Parade featuring the Drum and Bugle Corps and by the Silent Drill Platoon.
Read more about this topic: Marine Corps War Memorial
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.”
—Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)