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GIVE NOWIt is claimed, by websites and other sources various and sundry, that Thomas Jefferson, upon hearing of a meteorite crash in Connecticut in 1807 and its subsequent reportage by two professors at Yale, scoffed that it "was easier to believe that two Yankee professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven."
Recently on a weekend trip to D.C. I stopped in at the Library of Congress to visit the Thomas Jefferson's Library exhibit. This reconstructed library of the books Jefferson sold to Congress in 1815 was unveiled on Apr 12 this year as part of the new Library of Congress Experience, exhibits that allow users to interact with primary sources from American history.
A patron asked us about a very unusual quotation the other day: apparently someone, sometime said that Thomas Jefferson was "...a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father..."; this was supposedly a comment made by Jefferson's political opponents in the election of 1800.
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