250 Years Ago Today in What Became the USA:
June 26, 1776
Jefferson had finished the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, and Franklin and Adams (members of the Committee of 5 mentioned yesterday) were making edits in order to present the document to the Congress.
The Congress, for its part, had not even started officially debating independence, but it was clearly in the air, and backroom wrangling was going on all over the place.
The real fun was just about to start.
Stay tuned on the daily as we walk our way through the days before July 4.
And because this thread is all your fault, @scottlincicome, I just wanted to make sure you are aware of it.
For the first time, researchers have identified exactly what Roman builders were adding to their concrete to make it last for centuries....
At an unfinished building site in Pompeii, abandoned during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, archaeologists uncovered something rare: Roman concrete materials that were prepared but never mixed. That frozen moment revealed how Roman builders actually made their concrete.
Instead of mixing lime and water the way we do today, they combined quicklime with volcanic ash first, then added water. The reaction produced intense heat and left behind tiny fragments of reactive lime trapped inside the hardened concrete. When cracks later formed and water seeped in, those fragments reacted again and sealed the damage from within.
In other words, some Roman concrete was intentionally engineered to heal its own cracks — and it’s still doing it nearly 2,000 years later.
Archaeological Park of Pompeii
#archaeohistories
. @scottlincicome put a bug in my digital ear about a running commentary on what happened 250 years ago, which I thought was a great idea. So it starts today.
I will call it something thoroughly clever, like "250 Years Ago Today."
That should bring the masses on board as we work our way up to our 250th birthday.
In the original language of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote a scathing condemnation of King George’s perpetuation of the transatlantic slave trade. @JamesRHarrigan and @antonydavies discuss this and more with @TomKrannawitter in Ep 511 of Words & Numbers.