Among the excesses of the French Revolution: “Churches were re-consecrated as ‘Temples of Reason’, and so-called ‘revolutionary marriages’ were presided over, where priests and nuns were tied together naked, and drowned. Few of these allegedly egalitarian initiatives lasted far into the nineteenth century. By a long chalk the most durable among them was the creation of the metre.” Robert MacFarlane reviews The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey that Transformed the World by Ken Adler —A Measure to TreasureGuardian)