Between 1820 and 1850, American presses generated an enormous amount of literature devoted to the myth of apostolic Waldensianism. Though the Waldenses began as a lay reform movement in the twelfth century, speculations about their apostolic origin were popularized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This historical construction gave American Protestants a versatile rhetorical weapon against an increasingly encroaching Roman Catholicism. The apostolicity of Waldensianism allowed Protestants to trace their teachings not only to scripture but through the middle ages and the early church, providing a ready answer to Catholic accusations of Protestant novelty. Additionally, re-narrating the history of Waldensian persecution at the hand of Catholics reinforced nativist conceptions of Catholicism as a violently tyrannical religion, and became a call to action for Protestants to resist Rome's attempt to gain power in the United States. Though the myth of apostolic Waldensianism was widely held by American Protestants, by 1850 it became largely untenable. Historians on both side of the Atlantic contextualized the group as a medieval phenomenon, rather than the remnant of apostolic Protestantism.

There are a number of published reports on the epitaxial growth of Al(111) on Si(111) surfaces usually following a high temperature treatment of the Si surface in UHV. In contrast to these results, we have for the first time observed dominant epitaxial growth of Al(100) films on Si(111) surfaces that have been carefully cleaned and hydrogen terminated and not heated prior to effusion cell deposition of Al at room temperature in UHV. X-ray diffraction shows sharp and intense Al (200) diffraction, enhanced by post deposition annealing. Crystal quality and the dominance of Al(100) structure depend strongly on the substrate treatment and the off-cut angle, both of which control the steps on the Si(111) surface. The steps were found responsible for the epitaxial alignment of the film and the substrate lattices. Details of this alignment were observed in TEM cross-sectional images of the interface.