Thomas Jefferson knew a thing or two about epidemics. The virulent diseases most feared in his time were smallpox and yellow fever.

Jefferson’s more scientific side is on full display at Monticello in a treasure-trove of timekeeping devices ranging from sundials to gongs, to various types of clocks.

Imagine a world where life moved at four miles an hour, and the most one could readily travel in a day was just thirty miles. Such was the slow world Thomas Jefferson was born into in 1742.

For Jefferson, almost any activity could be transformed into an act of citizenship.

Before he was President, before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, before the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson feared an invisible enemy.

Before the era of Wii’s, Twitter, and Netflix, the Jefferson family entertained themselves with music, reading aloud, or scientific inquiry. As part of an ongoing campaign to restore Monticello’s interiors, curators recently acquired an air pump similar to Jefferson’s lost original.

Thomas Jefferson was fascinated by astronomy and owned several astronomical instruments during his lifetime, including an orrery - that is, a mechanical model of the solar system.

A new intriguing book on the shelves: Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi, by Chandra Mukerji. This dovetails nicely with one of our TJ Encyclopedia articles, which features an itinerary of Jefferson's travels through southern France and Italy - during which, yes, he visited the Canal du Midi.

Today was the grand opening of the new Monticello Visitor Center & Smith Education Center, and we are sooooooo tired right now.

Jefferson's once wrote about experiments that showed the human body will survive in rooms heated to 347°F--more than a hundred degrees above boiling water! How is that remotely possible?