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Posts Tagged ‘Louis Agassiz’

What a dive.

by Bunk Five Hawks X ( 19 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, Art, History, Humor, OOT, Open thread at July 15th, 2012 - 11:00 pm

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.