Today in History - 1884

Workers placed the 3,300 pound marble capstone on the Washington Monument, and topped it with a nine-inch pyramid of cast aluminum, completing construction of the 555-foot Egyptian obelisk. Nearly fifty years earlier, the Washington National Monument Society choose Robert Mills's design to honor first American president and founding father George Washington. The privately-funded organization laid the monument's cornerstone on Independence Day, 1848, in Washington, D.C.