Today, visitors to famous sites usually exit through the gift shop and leave with something like a postcard or refrigerator magnet. But for centuries, many travelers preferred a far more literal keepsake: a piece of the monument itself. Tourists routinely chipped off fragments of such famous landmarks as Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza, the Great Sphinx, Plymouth Rock, and even William Shakespeare’s supposed writing chair, taking home pocket-sized souvenirs as proof they had been there.

The practice became especially popular around the 18th century, when wealthy Britons embarking on the Grand Tour of Europe treated ancient ruins almost like souvenir stands. In 1830, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon complained that “the English disease” of souvenir-scavenging had spread so widely that nearly every mantelpiece seemed to display “a bit of the real Pyramids, a bit of Stonehenge.” Travelers often carried hammers and chisels, and if they forgot them, they could rent tools near Stonehenge to break off their own fragments.

Even famous visitors joined in. During a 1786 trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, future Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson cut a sliver from a chair believed to have belonged to William Shakespeare. Adams later wrote, “We cut off a Chip according to the Custom.” Jefferson eventually attached a wry note to his souvenir, joking that if the old, broken-down chair were genuine, “like the relics of the saints it must miraculously reproduce itself.” (Perhaps ironically, after Jefferson’s death it was the custom to take chips from his gravestone.)

As tourism exploded in the 19th and 20th centuries, the damage became impossible to ignore. Stonehenge alone endured constant chipping, graffiti, and vandalism before fencing, admission fees, and legal protections finally curbed the practice. What had once been considered an ordinary way to remember a trip gradually came to be recognized as the destruction of irreplaceable history. Today, a keychain or shot glass is considered a much better souvenir.