#2. The What Room?

How many times have you been hosting a fancy dinner party where the conversation starts to lull, leading you to exclaim, “Come on everybody, let’s head down to the bone room!”? Now, there’s no record of Thomas Jefferson actually saying this during a lavish party at Monticello, but I can only assume it must have come up.
What’s the bone room you ask? Well that’s a silly question—it’s a room full of bones, of course! Specifically, the bones of mastodons and other prehistoric creatures.

It’s a little known fact that our nation’s 3rd president was obsessed with paleontology. He was so fascinated by the idea of ancient, gigantic animals that he turned part of Monticello into his own prehistoric playground that came to be called the “bone room”. But here’s the kicker: Jefferson didn’t believe animals could go extinct. He was convinced that mastodons, those elephant-sized behemoths, were still out there, roaming the unexplored corners of America.

In fact, Jefferson was so intrigued by the idea of massive, mysterious beasts roaming the untamed American wilderness that he asked Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for mastodons during their famous expedition. Spoiler alert: they didn’t find any.

So the next time you're arguing with your spouse about whether the spare bedroom should be a man-cave or a giant walk-in closet, consider compromising and installing your very own bone room.