NEW YORK - Born in the Great Depression, it has weathered economic hardship, world war, labor strikes, murder, terrorist fears, and even a plane crash. The Empire State Building, once the tallest building in the world and again the tallest in New York City, is turning 75 years old on Monday. A yearlong celebration is planned for the building, consisting mainly of monthly light shows, according to Lydia Ruth, spokeswoman for the corporation that runs the building. Like London's Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Empire State Building represented in its time "what we were capable of," says Carol Willis, an architectural historian and founder-director of lower Manhattan's Skyscraper Museum. [More]