Perhaps, on Earth today we will not find another building that can compete in "mystery" with the Pentagon. It's all about the form …
Cherished place
Around 1940, the American administration had a crazy idea - to place the entire US Department of Defense in one building. And this is no less than 26 thousand employees scattered in 17 separate buildings in the District of Columbia. Moreover, according to the terms of reference, 40 thousand people were to comfortably accommodate at the same time in the future citadel!
In Europe, the Second World War was gaining momentum, to which the Americans could join at any time, but here is such an idea! It is somehow illogical that all the key military commanders are under one roof. Even the top managers of Coca-Cola who know the recipe for soda do not fly in the same plane. Nevertheless, the architects immediately after the signal of the president began to look for the territory for the construction of the citadel.
In Arlington, a suburb of Washington DC, they took a fancy to one place that was once expropriated. Feng Shui masters would surely envy them. What impressed me most was that the plot of land was delineated by five roads, some of which intersected at an angle of 108 degrees.
To most, of course, this could not say much, but architects are strong in geometry, and they knew perfectly well that straight lines converge at such a degree in an equilateral pentagon, which the ancient Greeks called the "pentagon".
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For us, it will remain a mystery, what was primary - the place that the projectors discovered, or the project for which the territory was specially selected. I must say that the place was decently swampy, and very close to it was the famous Arlington Cemetery, where American soldiers were buried - not the best place for construction. Feng Shui masters would hardly have been approved, but the US President probably knew more Chinese geomancers - the land for the construction had been agreed. The only thing, Roosevelt ordered - at the request of his wife - to move the future building by half a mile so that it would not block the view from Arlington Cemetery to Washington.
Golden ratio
As you know, at the entrance to the Academy of the philosopher Plato hung the motto "Not a geometer, let him not enter." Today we can say with confidence that the authors of the building of the American department would have been warmly accepted by capricious Platonists.
Few people know that the Pentagon is still the most optimal structure in ergonomics.
The building is crossed by ten corridors in the center, which connect five pentagons coming from the center. So, an employee of the US military department can get to any point of the building around the perimeter, spending no more than seven minutes.
Natural ergonomics is associated with the properties of the geometric figure itself. So, the diagonals of the pentagon form a pentagram, and the points of intersection of the diagonals in the regular pentagon are always the points of the "golden section". At the same time, they form another pentagon, which, when drawing diagonals, will certainly form another one. And so on ad infinitum.
Thus, the pentagon, as it were, consists of an infinite number of pentagons, which are formed by the intersection points of the diagonals.
This endless repetition of the same geometric figure creates a sense of rhythm and harmony, which is unconsciously fixed by our mind.
The center of the world
However, it was probably not only the ergonomic advantages that prompted the US military to opt for a regular pentagon figure. The symbolism itself played an important role. Let us turn to Plato again. The famous philosopher called the dodecahedron the most perfect geometric body - a dodecahedron made up of twelve pentagons. Plato argued that it was him "God used to plan the universe as a model."
In 2003, when analyzing data from the WMAP spacecraft launched by NASA, it was hypothesized that the universe is Poincaré's dodecahedral space. According to the simulation data, the observation results indicated that the Universe is a set of infinitely repeating dodecahedrons - regular polyhedrons, the surface of which is formed by 12 pentagons.
It is curious that a hypothesis arose among conspiracy theorists that the Pentagon building is only a visible part of the structure. Say, the structure is completely shaped like a dodecahedron, however, the rest of the geometric body is hidden from view underground. Of course, this cannot be verified. Any uncertainty excites fantasies.
Pentagon horoscope
Many experts in the field of astrology argued that the construction of the Pentagon did not go without the advice of astrologers. The construction was planned to begin on September 11, 1941 and finish on January 15, 1943.
It is curious that the builders met the deadlines, as they say, a second per second, which in itself is an exceptional case - especially for wartime.
Astrologers noticed in the dates of the beginning and the end of construction a certain "star" pattern. Their attention was drawn to the "planet of war" - Mars. Construction began when this celestial body was in its sign - Aries, and ended when Mars was in its exaltation (maximum strength) - Scorpio. It is curious that after the commissioning of the Pentagon, the American army conducted only successful military operations in World War II.
Threefold September 11
This date mysteriously accompanies the Pentagon. On this day, in 1941, construction of the building began, in 2001 the Pentagon was attacked by Boeing, and on September 11, 2002, the entire territory of the Pentagon came back into operation.
One of the main improvements was a complete renovation of the building windows, replacing them with armored ones. The outer walls of the building have been reinforced and made explosion-proof. The elevators leading to the metro station were closed and general security measures were significantly increased.
Conspiracy theorists are trying to look for patterns in this coincidence, but no one has yet succeeded in discovering the mystery of the September 11 factor. It is curious that some hotheads, carried away by the mysteries of the Pentagon, predict that in the "biography" of the object two more September 11 should happen - in order to symbolically complete the regular pentagon.
Was there a Boeing?
But the main mystery, at least in the public domain, is the terrorist attack on the Pentagon building on September 11, 2001. According to official data, on this day, at 09:37:46, the left wing of the building of the US military department was rammed by a Boeing 757-200. This wing houses the command of the naval forces. Part of the building collapsed and was seriously damaged. Curiously, at the time of the impact, this particular wing of the Pentagon was undergoing redevelopment, and most of the employees from it were transferred to other offices. Almost immediately after the attack, dozens of comments emerged claiming that no plane had hit the Pentagon. According to the doubters, damage to the building is minimal after an attack by an aircraft weighing 100 tons, moving at a speed of at least 300 km per hour.
"On the site in front of the wall, not only are there no debris, but there are no traces of combustion on the grass from the huge volume of blazing fuel from (presumably) destroyed aircraft tanks," the experts write.
In addition, after any plane crash, even the most terrible, there are always recognizable remnants of fuselage parts. In the case of the Pentagon, according to official information, all the remnants of the Boeing were melted down in a fire. Miraculously, only the black box survived, the records of which proved that the board was captured by terrorists.
Some analysts put forward the version that the nature of the destruction of the Pentagon is more consistent with the attack of the Tomahawk cruise missile without a warhead, no warhead (explosives) - a ram of an aircraft with almost full tanks, they say, was supposed to almost completely destroy the Pentagon. However, employees of the department do not comment on the opinions of amateurs in any way. What can people, even experts in explosives, know about the supernatural properties of the geometric figure of an equilateral pentagon? "Let not a geometer enter!" And then, how can these doubters explain, where did the passengers of the plane that allegedly did not crash go?
Entertaining arithmetic
While the Pentagon is boiling in the confined space of an infinite number of internal pentagons, pentagrams, "flavored" with golden sections, people outside are trying in vain to solve their riddles. Sometimes, those who are dissatisfied with the official information of the US military department have to be content with cunning numerological calculations that give amusing results.
So, the Pentagon was built in 491 days. If, according to the method of Pythagoras, add these numbers (4 + 9 + 1), then we get - 5 (the number of sides of the pentagon). If we go further, according to the same Pythagorean method, and decide to multiply the numbers (4X9X1), then we get - 36. If we don't rest on this number, we count the sum of all integers from 1 to 36, then we get - 666.
Conspiracy theorists claim that it was for this number that the builders worked day and night, so as not to overshoot the deadlines. But so you can agree to anything.
By the way, the pentagon with the pentagram enclosed in it was a symbol of the famous Pythagorean mystical union, founded by the ancient Greek thinker. So, the Pythagoreans believed that their emblem not only symbolizes the harmony of the universe, but is also capable of exerting a harmonious effect on the surrounding space. The impact limits, of course, depend on the size of the regular pentagon. So, the perimeter of the Arlington geometric figure is about 1405 meters - this is enough today to influence the whole world.