(Roughly) Daily

In 1702, when the Spanish still ruled Florida, an English fleet from colonial Carolina approached Castillo de San Marcos, a Spanish stronghold on the Atlantic shore.

The fort guarded the Spanish empire’s trade routes as well as the surrounding city of St. Augustine, and the English wanted to run this politically and economically important outpost for themselves. Led by Carolina’s governor James Moore, the English boats dropped their anchors and laid siege.

But even after nearly two months of being shelled with cannonballs and gunfire, the fort’s walls wouldn’t give. In fact, they appeared to be “swallowing” the British cannonballs, which then became embedded within the stone. Precisely how the walls did this remained a mystery for the next three centuries.

Normally, a cannonball creates long, deep cracks in stone that radiate out from the impact’s center, causing catastrophic damage to a structure. This was clearly not the case for the walls surrounding Castillo de San Marcos. Built from coquina—sedimentary rock formed from compressed shells of dead marine organisms—the walls suffered little damage from the British onslaught. As one Englishman described it, the rock “will not splinter but will give way to cannon ball as though you would stick a knife into cheese.”…

The secret of the Spanish– and what it might mean for the future: “The Mystery of Florida’s Cannonball-Eating Spanish Fort.”

* Friedrich Nietzsche

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As we muse on mutable materials, we might send altitudinous birthday greetings to Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin; he was born on this date in 1838.  An inventor, engineer, and manufacturer, he was the aviation pioneer who built the first rigid dirigible airships– called, in his honor, Zeppelins.

He patented his idea in 1895, then formed a company to build airships in 1898–  though many thought his invention incredible, and dubbed him “Foolish Count.”  His first airship took off on July 2, 1900; its success stimulated funding.  Eventually, he produced more than 100 dirigibles for military uses in World War I, during which, the Zeppelins were used to bomb Britain.  After the war, he continued to improve the design and built a fleet of airships for commercial passenger service, which included transatlantic flights.  Zeppelin use ended after the May 6, 1937 Hindenburg fire disaster at Lakehurst, N.J.

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