
Location: British Museum
Medium: Granite
The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum
wiki/Rosetta_Stone
Also on this day,
1834 | System of torturous tribunals ends in Spain
Instituted by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella in 1478, the dreaded Spanish Inquisition finally comes to an official end. Preaching a doctrine that ordered conversion to Catholicism or exile, and employing torture and death sentences, the Inquisition will not be missed.1870 | Last Confederate state is readmitted to the Union
The United States is once again made whole as Georgia gains representation in Congress, making it the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union. It’s a watershed moment for Reconstruction, but the process of healing after the Civil War will remain arduous.1997 | Famed fashion designer shot in Miami
Just back from a morning walk, Italian style icon Gianni Versace is shot twice while on the front steps of his Miami Beach, Florida, mansion. The fifth and final victim of Andrew Cunanan’s multi-state crime spree, Versace will be mourned by family, friends, and a shocked fashion industry.
Today in History 07/15/17

At the end of the American Civil War, the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic. Wartime damage, the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery, and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The state's chief cash crop, cotton, fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865, while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines. White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop, often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned. The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.
Bartow County was representative of the postwar difficulties. Property destruction and the deaths of a third of the soldiers caused financial and social crises; recovery was delayed by repeated crop failures. The Freedmen's Bureau agents were unable to give blacks the help they needed.
wiki/Georgia_during_Reconstruction