Kicker: Revolutionary fruit preserves

NICK EICHER, HOST: You’d think that after centuries we’d learned everything there is to learn about the estate the father of the country left behind.

Not so! Last week excavators at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate made a discovery:

SOUND: [Excavating]

What they found were several intact bottles of preserved cherries and berries. Jason Boroughs is principal archaeologist at the site:

BOROUGHS: Finding what is essentially fresh fruit 250 years later is pretty spectacular. This pit in particular, we have a theory. We think this is probably the summer of 1775 which is the last harvest before Washington rode off to Philadelphia and became commander in chief just before the revolution.

You can glean a lot from artifacts, but one thing is likely to remain apocryphal: and that’s whether young George really chopped down a cherry tree.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: If he had, why would he have had cherries to pick and preserve? I say it exonerates him!

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

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