Tag Archives: Thomas Jefferson

1802: The Mammoth Cheese

On the first day of 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a “mammoth” Cheshire cheese was delivered to the President’s House by the itinerant Baptist preacher and political gadfly Elder John Leland (1754-1841). … Continue reading

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1732: The Morals of Chess

Although Benjamin Franklin likely composed his essay “The Morals of Chess” as early as 1732, it was first published in 1786, during the height of interest surrounding Wolfgang von Kempelen’s mechanical chess-playing Turk; Franklin himself had lost to the machine … Continue reading

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