September 27: Rosetta Stone

September 27: Rosetta Stone. On this day in the year 1822, Jean-François Champollion announced that he had deciphered the Rosetta stone, a crucial step in the interpretation of the ancient Egyptian writing system which was based on hieroglyphs. So, if you keep seeing ads for "Rosetta Stone" language-learning software, you might be interested in reading about the history of the real Rosetta Stone itself! You can find out more in this Wikipedia article, and below you can see a picture of the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum: