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| Science & Technology |
| The County Durham men who drew the Mason-Dixon Line |
| 2017-09-02 |
| [BBC] It is 250 years since America's Mason-Dixon Line was completed. Hailed as a groundbreaking technical achievement, it came to symbolise the border between the Civil War North and South, separating free Pennsylvania from slave-owning Maryland. But who were the two British men who created it? "It was the equivalent of the moon landings today," according to Mason-Dixon Line expert David Thaler. Baker's son Charles Mason and lapsed Quaker Jeremiah Dixon were established scientists when commissioned to settle a land dispute in the pre-revolutionary America of 1763. For 80 years the Calvert family of Maryland and the Penns of Pennsylvania had been locked in a bloody dispute over the boundary between the two colonies they had been granted by the English Crown. "The stakes were very high," said Mr Thaler, trustee of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore and an expert on the Mason-Dixon project. "There was about 4,000 sq miles of territory that was in dispute and nobody knew who to pay taxes to. Warfare regularly broke out along the border." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #4 The science assuredly settled!" Cheap shot, indeed, given the bit in the article where they explain that the best science of the time was off by a bit compared to modern methods. And if course, the troubles later did not occur at the border, but further in on both sides. The sweet order of the border remains to this day. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2017-09-02 16:07 |
| #3 But finally sweet order... More or less, ha. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2017-09-02 07:38 |
| #2 established scientists Well, if that doesn't call for a cheap shot... "Full four score long years have we battled, The Penns versus Calverts, well nettled, But finally sweet order Prevails at the border, The science assuredly settled!" |
| Posted by: Zenobia Floger6220 2017-09-02 06:11 |
| #1 Could Hadrian's Wall been something of an inspiration for the Durham men? Well, it was less than a one day ride to the north. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2017-09-02 03:39 |