On July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson paid £3/15s for a luxury a thermometer and that evening he set down in his journal that the Philadelphia temperature was 73½°. If he said so, it was so. Thomas Jefferson was a man who knew, and meant, what he said, and no despot could have made him change his mind.
Just 170 years later, in Paris, James F. Byrnes needed a thermometer a lot more than Jefferson had. In the hectic week before the Russians finally agreed that a 21-nation Peace Conference should be called on July 29, the political temperature...
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