More often than not in these cases, the fault is with the families of the bereaved, who may well miss tiny mistakes when reviewing proofs of the proposed gravestones. According to a spokeswoman for the cemetery in 2014, at least 4,125 of the field’s roughly 280,000 tombstones were overdue for corrections to the names or dates etched onto their faces. For further evidence of this, just pop across the Potomac river to Arlington Cemetery. But the fact is, engraving typos are a shockingly common occurrence, with an even more common explanation: simple, stupid, human error. (At least this typo was fixed fairly quickly-the New York Times ran this typo for 102 years.) Given the time, money, and prestige behind the Lincoln Memorial project, you might think it's outrageous that such an obvious spelling blunder could make it past so many stakeholders. To hear the engraver tell it, Lincoln was more concerned with his “high hope for the euture.” Visit the Memorial today and you can still see where the bottom of the "E" in "EUTURE" was eventually filled in with slightly off-colored stone to become "FUTURE," more or less. In his speech, the war-weary president expressed his “high hope for the future” of his drastically changing and bloodied homeland. Chiseled into the stone is Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1865, less than two months after the successful passing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Step into the Memorial’s interior and turn your attention to the north wall. Yes, despite its many merits as a national landmark and work of art, the Lincoln Memorial enshrines what may be the greatest blunder in American monument-making.
When the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922, the world bore witness to how $2,000,000 in federal funds, eight years of American elbow grease, and 38,000 tons of marble, granite and limestone could result in something truly extraordinary: A very, very expensive typo.