Comments by "Big Blue" (@bigblue6917) on "History Lost: The Tragedy of the 1890 Census" video.

Well that was definitely history that need to be remembered as I had never read of the fire. It did remind me of something which happened here in Britain. Many of the records of those who served in the British armed forces in WW1 were stored in a warehouse in London. Unfortunately the warehouse was destroyed by the Germans in the Blitz in WW2. Though many important documents had been removed from London these were not amongst them. You mentioning about preserving documents from the 1890 census reminded me of something I came across several years ago. During excavations at Pompeii a number of piece of what was thought to be charcoal were found. The would have been used for cooking. Then someone looked at them and realised they were in fact rolls of paper, the type the Romans would have used for documents. They had been burnt by the fires caused by the volcanic eruptions. When they were examined in a laboratory it was realised that though they had been burnt that, under the right conditions, they could be read. Light acts differently to the ink to then it does to the burnt material they were made from and some of the text could be read. Unfortunately this would not have been available back then but if they had preserved the documents who knows what they could have found.
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