Leana' Back, But Notta' Too Much

   Welcome to Friday with Joe McDonnell

   On this day in 1173 the foundation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was laid. It was intended to be the freestanding bell tower for the adjacent Cathedral of Pisa and not a world famous landmark due to its four degree lean. The trouble started in the foundation which considering the looseness of the soil should have been much deeper than nine feet.
   The tower was already sinking five years later when work had progressed to the second floor. Fortunately for the tower, war broke out and work stopped for almost 100 years. This gave the subsoil a chance to compact. By 1272, when the tower was half done, the builder stated building the walls on one side higher that the other to compensate for the lean. Now the tower had a curve as well as a lean. In 1284 construction halted for another war. The bell-chamber was finally completed in 1372 and the only thing to do now was to start selling tickets.
   Galileo was admitted free to do his gravity experiments. The U.S. Army almost blew the tower up during WWII. The Germans were supposedly using the tower for reconnaissance. The army sergeant sent to check out the rumors said the tower was too beautiful to destroy, even if the Germans were using it.
   Over the centuries, many attempts were made to stop the increasing lean. But the tourism department didn't want to straighten the tower too much. Pisa had a good thing going. But when a tower in Northern Italy collapsed in 1989 killing four, the government got serious. The tower was closed to tourists. Apartment buildings in the path of a collapse were vacated. The bells were removed and weights were attached to the high side of the base. A cable was wrapped around the third floor and anchored hundreds of feet further back.
   The solution that finally worked was to remove soil from under the high end. Slowly the tower began straightening. The Tower of Pisa was reopened to tourists in 2001. Four hundred thousand of them per year are allowed to climb to the top. Many times that visit Pisa to take silly pictures of themselves pretending to hold up the tower.
   The tower is now where it was in 1838. In the past twenty years it was regained four more centimeters and will be perfectly straight by the year 6019.  A tower in Germany and another in Switzerland are already fighting for the Guinness title of "Farthest Leaning Tower."

No one cried when this Quincy, MA icon came down.