In some parts of the US, students have already returned to the classroom, while others are frantically squeezing the last drops of freedom from summer break as they prepare to start a new school year. One school supply that unites most students is the classic, yellow-coated, No. 2 pencil. For centuries, the pencil was a tool so vital that many would use theirs until only a tiny stub remained. An entire market for various pencil accoutrements existed in the 18th and 19th centuries, including a pencil grip called an ‘extender’ that allowed you to use the last bit of a pencil so as not to waste what was, at the time, a precious commodity. Think of it in terms of all the things you buy to enhance your mobile phone or tablet, and then imagine that the pencil once held equal value as a communication device. (In our hearts, it still does.)
Class, please take out a No. 2 pencil…
Today in History
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White Desert National Park, Egypt
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Ponta da Piedade rock formations in Portugal
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Jerte Valley in bloom
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A growing business
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Mount Rainier National Park
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Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
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Celebrating Bike to Work Week, May 14-18
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Polar bear season in Manitoba
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Gamboa Crater, Mars
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Headed to the High Country
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World Teachers Day
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Ready for takeoff
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Get the bear facts
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Marshland, Gloucester, MA
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The persistence of Perito Moreno
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Pollinator Week
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National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
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A polar bear near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada
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Once upon a time there was a bridge…
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Red lechwe, Okavango Delta, Botswana
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Celebrating the Acadians
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A red fox on the Swiss side of the Jura Mountain range
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Notre-Dame Cathedral reopens
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Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia
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Prague, Czech Republic
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National Museum of African American History and Culture
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A festival of colors
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International Whale Shark Day
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It s Coffee Day
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Three cheers for polar bears!