Although we had a great time at dinner with some of my high school friends, we spent a lot of time today at the Texas State Museum. It was a beehive of activity because they were holding the Rodeo Austin auction which is a very big deal. The kids are auctioning off their livestock and art. It was very professionally done. Interesting to watch. Anyway, back to the museum. It had a lot of interesting exhibits, but I was particularly attracted to the La Belle exhibit. This ship was one of Robert LaSalle's fleet of four, all of which met with catastrophic ends. This one went down in Matagorda Bay and was recovered in 1996. The most interesting part of the recovery was that they built a cofferdam around it and pumped the water out so the archaeologists could work on dry land. Read the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_%28ship%29 . Anyway, I was fascinated by this roll of bronze wire. It is about two feet in diameter. Back in the 17th century they had obviously learned to extrude metal. I just had never thought about it. Bronze wire was used quite a bit for all sorts of utilitarian applications. The plaque at the exhibit said it was like 17th century duct tape. All in all, pretty neat as far as I am concerned. Remember, I am easily amused.