jihadjihad 17 hours ago

It's a neat material, similar to natural coquina [0].

One neat thing about coquina in particular is that it was used to construct the walls of the Florida fort mentioned in TFA [1, 2] where it effectively "swallowed" incoming British cannonballs, much to their bewilderment.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coquina

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos

2: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/coquina-fort-in-florid...

  • cassepipe 16 hours ago

    I wonder how thick you need to make a coquina wall in order to prevent a cannonball from that era to go through. I guess not having it thick enough can be dangerous as the inner layer of the wall might work as shrapnel and hurt anyone on the other side. I know some tank shells worked on that principle before they added some kind of liner on the inside.

Rygian 19 hours ago

"Tabique" is Spanish for wall, as a general noun. (Synonyms: muro, tapia, pared)

"Tabique de Hostion" is a misspelling, the word they wanted to write is Ostión [1] (synonym with "ostra" for oyster). "Hostión" instead means "a large host" as a sacramental bread, and is also vulgar slang for "a heavy smack or punch" [2].

[1] https://dle.rae.es/osti%C3%B3n [2] https://dle.rae.es/hostia

  • eddd-ddde 16 hours ago

    Tabique in Spanish is brick, at least that's the Spanish I know.

    • cryptonector 11 hours ago

      There are many Spanishes, all sharing roughly the same basic rules (orthographic, grammatic) but all with different vocabularies, and different preferences for various tenses.

    • cassepipe 16 hours ago

      In mexico yes but in spain it is indeed "wall"