The Georgia Guidestones

For forty-two years a stranger’s monument stood in an Elbert County field and nobody knew who put it there. In June 1979 a man calling himself Robert C. Christian walked into the Elberton Granite Finishing Company, said he represented a small group of loyal Americans, and paid over $100,000 for six granite slabs, nineteen feet three inches tall and weighing 237,746 pounds together. Unveiled in March 1980, they carried ten principles in eight languages, English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian, on governance, population, the environment and the spirit. They drew pilgrims, conspiracy theorists and vandals in equal measure. At about four in the morning on 6 July 2022 somebody set off an explosive device, destroying the Swahili and Hindi slab; the authorities took the rest down the same day. No suspect was ever named and no motive was given. The site is empty now, and that is the whole point of the pin.