Today is the feast day of St Stephen (Istvan) of Hungary, Patron saint of bricklayers. 10 things you didn’t know about bricks:
Bricks have been used for building for a very long time. The oldest known bricks were made from mud and left to dry in the sun. Bricks dating before 7500 BC, were found at Tell Aswad, in the upper Tigris region and in southeast Anatolia.
The firing of bricks was first done in China around 4,400BC. Those bricks were used to make floors.
The Romans used mobile kilns for making bricks so they could build brick buildings wherever they went. Their bricks would be stamped with the symbol of the legion which made them.
Bricks vary in colour according to the content of the Clay used to make them and the temperature they are fired at. Red bricks are red because of the Iron content. The darker red they are, the higher the firing temperature. White or Yellow bricks have a higher lime content.
Using bricks limits how high a building can be, which is why Skyscrapers are made of concrete. The Monadnock Building, built in 1896 in Chicago, needed extra thick walls to maintain the structural integrity of its 17 storeys. The world’s tallest brick structure is the Karmeliter church in Vienna, Austria at 333 feet tall.
At the end of the 19th century, the Hudson River region of New York State was the world's largest brick manufacturing region. There were 130 brickyards lining the shores of the Hudson River from Mechanicsville to Haverstraw and employing 8,000 people. At its peak, about 1 billion bricks were produced every year.
In England the standard size for a brick is 9 x 4+1⁄2 x 3 inches. This size was regulated by law in 1625. Generally the size of a brick is determined by the ability of a bricklayer to pick it up in one hand.
Not all bricks are clay. Fly ash bricks are made from the waste material produced by coal-fired power plants, an environmentally friendly option since they are made from recycled materials.
Bricks are energy efficient because they hold sunlight throughout the day and release that energy after the sun goes down.
The indentation on the surface of a brick is called a frog. Nobody knows why it’s called a frog, or even what it is for. There is debate among bricklayers as to whether bricks should be laid frog up or frog down.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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