During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a statue of Louis Agassiz fell from its niche on the front of the Stanford University zoology building. Stanford President David Starr Jordan later wrote, “Somebody – Dr. Angell, perhaps – remarked that ‘Agassiz was great in the abstract but not in the concrete.'”
Four cool things about the photo.
1. The statue didn’t shatter on impact;
2. It was able to pierce the pavement;
3. It inspired the invention of the concrete wheelstop;
4. 106 years later, it provided an introduction to The Overnight Open Thread.
