Word: pompeii
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...volcano erupted and covered Pompeii with ash. Eighteen hundred years later, archaeologists found that the Pompeians' bodies, long since dust, had left molds of themselves in the impacted cinders. The scientists poured in liquid plaster, and when it set, the casts were lifted out and put in a local museum...
...human ambition to defy convention and authority-and both convention and authority, down the ages, have diligently worked overtime trying to scrub the walls clean. They can never, of course, successfully purge the record of these irreverent footnotes, which proliferate in both written and pictorial forms. When archaeologists unearthed Pompeii beginning in the 18th century, they found scores of graffiti that, after some two millenniums, have not lost their topicality: "Here I enjoyed the favors of many girls"; "Here Arphocras pleasured himself with Drauca for a denarius"-about a penny...