Free Republic

The ridge high above Los Angeles is filled with clues. There are shattered pieces of electrical equipment, and a grove of madrone blackened by fire. Police tape is strung around one section of the sandy soil, now mixed with ash. Investigators have zeroed in on these rocky bluffs with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean as the ignition point of the Palisades fire, the inferno that has destroyed at least 5,000 homes and businesses and killed at least eight people. A recent visit by New York Times reporters to the site — near the “crime scene,” as officers for the...

A great man once said, “It is best I had no learn­ing, for many learned men be great fools.”This great man was Thomas Fuller. He was born in 1710 in Africa. He was known as the Vir­ginia cal­cu­la­tor and Negro Tom.Thomas Fuller arrived on the Unit­ed States’ shores in 1724, when he was just 14 years old. Against his will, he was put on a boat and sent to America.Though he nev­er learned to read or write, Fuller could mul­ti­ply to 9 dig­it num­bers, state the num­ber of sec­onds in a giv­en time, and cal­cu­late the num­ber of grains of...

Thomas Fuller, familiarly known as the Virginia Calculator, was a native of Africa. At the age of fourteen he was stolen, and sold into slavery in Virginia, where he found himself the property of a planter residing about four miles from Alexandria. Born in Africa somewhere between present-day Liberia and Benin, Fuller was enslaved and shipped to America in 1724 at the age of 14, eventually becoming the legal property of Presley and Elizabeth Cox of Alexandria, Virginia. The Coxes owned 16 slaves, and appeared to value Fuller the most; he expressed gratitude for not being sold. He did...