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Fact Check: The story behind 'The Freedom Rock'

Times-Union readers want to know:

I received an email with some fantastic photos of a painted rock in Iowa. The email says the rock used to be covered in graffiti but since it was painted with a patriotic theme, it has been untouched by vandals. Does the rock really exist?

Yes, it does, and it's quite well known.

Dubbed "The Freedom Rock," the landmark is on Highway 25, about a mile south of Greenfield, Iowa, off Interstate 80. For years, the rock featured nothing but graffiti, according to a 2003 American Forces Press Service article. Then, in 1999, town resident Ray "Bubba" Sorensen II was inspired by the movie "Saving Private Ryan" and decided to make better use of the rock.

Sorensen told the Press Service: "It was right around Memorial Day, and I was driving by that rock and wondered what it would be like if I actually took the time to go out there and paint it. And so I painted it with the flag-raising at Iwo Jima."

It brought such a huge response, he said, that he kept painting the rock each year around Memorial Day, when he paints over the previous year's scene with white paint and creates a new image.

Sorensen is a full-time graphic artist/mural painter/photographer who owns and operates Sorensen Studios in Greenfield with his wife Maria, she told the Times-Union in an email. Ray is not commissioned to paint Freedom Rock, but pays for supplies out of his own pocket along with the help of donations and proceeds of merchandise sold at The Freedom Rock Store, Maria Sorensen said.

Only once since Sorensen began painting the rock has his work been defaced, Snopes.com reported. The 60th anniversary tribute to veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack was vandalized a few weeks after it was completed, but the vandal "got a punch in the face from a Vietnam War veteran." That 2001 episode was the last time the rock was defaced, Maria Sorensen told the Times-Union.

Margie Moore, innkeeper at the nearby Brass Lantern, told the St. Joseph News-Press that people visit Freedom Rock from all over the world.

Some of those visitors have been Vietnam veterans, according to information sent by Maria Sorensen. In 2006, some veterans were traveling to Washington, D.C., to spread ashes of fellow Vietnam vets at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. Along the way, they passed the rock being painted, stopped and asked Sorensen if they could sprinkle some ashes at the base of the rock. It was a windy day, and Sorensen told them that the ashes would just blow away. So he suggested that the ashes be sprinkled into the paint and he would paint them directly onto the rock so they would be there forever.

Snopes weighs in on 'unbelieveable' 3D printing video

A video is making the rounds which some people find hard to believe. It shows the 3D printing of a crescent wrench, which is then used to tighten a nut. Enough people found the video so unbelievable that it made its way to Snopes.com, the famed website that specializes in separating truth from lie on the Internet.

The Snopes verdict? The video is real, but the boring stuff in the middle was edited out.

The video clip is from an episode of Known Universe on the National Geographic Channel . The 3D printer is from Z Corp . In the episode, host David Kaplan visits Z Corp headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts and learns about 3D printing, making references to the idea of someday printing tools on demand in outer space. He asks Joe Titlow, Z Corp’s VP of product management, if he can replicate a crescent wrench. Titlow scans the wrench, edits the resulting 3D data a bit, and prints a new one. Everyone goes “gee wizz,” makes reference to Star Trek replicators, and the show moves on.

A couple of years ago I came home from a trade show with a few 3D printed objects, including a simple bearing mechanism. I gave one to my brother-in-law, a machinist. He showed it around at work. Later he told me, everyone there thought he was lying when he said it was printed, not machined or cast.

The well-known quote from science fiction author William Gibson (Twitter: @GreatDismal) is still way too accurate: “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed yet.” Z Corp wins a PR bonanza for being in a viral video helping convince the world 3D printing exists, and for helping to drag a few more people into the future some of us are already living.

3d printing has been around for over 30 years. this zcorp printer also has been around for a while too. It’s a complex process to 3d scan something, and 3d printing something that size takes hours, but it is totally doable. They had to manually edit the scan data to re engineer that screw, but 3d scanning is real. If you want to 3d print something, it’s easy. They certainly edited the video to cut down the hours that go into scanning and printing and simplified it for public viewing, but what they did is basically entirely possible. If you’d like to try 3d printing something, check out http://www.shapeways.com and you can order a 3d printed object today!

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