Tandil - Place Name

Place Name

The name of the city comes from the Mapuche words tan ("falling"), and lil ("rock"). It is probably a reference to the Piedra Movediza ("Moving Stone"), a large boulder which stood seemingly miraculously balanced on the edge of a rocky foothill. The Moving Stone toppled on February 29, 1912, and split into two pieces at the bottom of the hill. Some people thought that tan in fact meant "moving". In order to demonstrate the slight movements of the boulder, it was common practice to place bottles or some other things under its base to see them break. As of May 2007, a replica was set up in the same place where the original stood. Although the replica was made by engineering students, it is cemented in place and does not teeter the way the original did. It is a "moving rock" that does not move.

Read more about this topic:  Tandil

Famous quotes containing the word place:

    In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    ... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)