Brick

Bricks are commonly used construction materials made from clay, concrete, or other materials. They are typically rectangular in shape and used for building walls, paths, and other structures.

Brick from the chimney at Whitehead Plantation. Lookandlearn.com

The first sun-dried bricks were made by the people of Jericho, in 8000 BC. In their simplest form (still familiar today in many hot regions), these early bricks were shaped by pressing mud or clay into a mould. The damp blocks were then left to bake hard in the sun.

The ancient Egyptians had a limitless supply of the clay that forms the bed of the River Nile. They sun-dried this clay, often first mixing it with a straw binder, to make bricks. Nearly all their homes were built from sun-dried clay bricks.

The Romans, in building their massive structures, used fired bricks, often decorated with colored glazes.

3.8 billion bricks were used to build the Great Wall of China.

Containing four million bricks and weighing 37,000 tonnes, the dome of Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral is a spectacular feat of renaissance engineering.

After the thin tile bricks of the Roman era, for a thousand years in Britain no bricks were made or used. However, by the 16th century they were being imported from France and were beginning to be manufactured in England of local clay.

In 1694 with money given to him by his patron King William III of Orange, the author Daniel Defoe set up a brick and pantile works in Tilbury, Essex.

In 1784, Great Britain imposed a tax on bricks to pay for the war in American Colonies. In response, people starting using larger bricks. The government responded by limiting the dimensions of a brick and doubling the tax on larger bricks. Buildings can be dated based on the brick size.  

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the United States since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

Winston Churchill was a fine bricklayer. He created with his own hands the garden walls, rockery and waterworks at Chartwell.

Pink Floyd was inducted into the National Association of Brick Distributors' Hall of Fame on October 10, 1991 for their services to the brick industry through their 1979 album, The Wall. According to the National Association of Brick Distributors, Pink Floyd was inducted into the Hall of Fame "for their contributions to the promotion of brick as a building material."

The largest brick ever created, according to the Guinness World Records, was crafted by ACME Brick in Denton, Texas. Completed in July 2007, this behemoth is 3000 times bigger than the standard brick. It measured:

Length: 2.94 meters (9 ft 8 in)

Width: 0.99 meters (3 ft 3 in)

Height: 0.99 meters (3 ft 3 in)

Weight: 9,300 pounds (4,218 kg)

This giant brick, affectionately nicknamed "Baby Clay," was made from a special blend of clays sourced from multiple locations. It took a team of skilled workers several weeks to mold and fire the brick in a custom-built kiln. While originally created as a publicity stunt, it now resides at the Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum in Texas, serving as a testament to human ingenuity and brick-making history.

The surface area of an average-sized brick is 79 cm squared (12.245 square inches).

The indentation in a brick is called a frog, no one is really sure why.

Colombian architect Oscar Mendez started a company to turn waste plastics into Lego style bricks for low cost homes. Using the bricks, it takes four people about five days to construct a 430 square foot house. The concept is to reduce plastic waste and give homes to those most in need.

There are ten million bricks in the Empire State Building.