Stone

Stone, also known as Smooth Stone or Natural Stone is a type of block. It uses the same texture on all six sides of the block. Stone appears abundantly on naturally generated maps, and (besides Air) has the most blocks in a normal map.

Creative Mode
Stone is available for use in Creative mode. The Stone layer of a Creative map contains Caverns, Ore and underground pools of Water and Lava. Just like all other blocks, stone breaks instantly when hit.

When there were not many block types, Stone was an often-used building material. Currently, Stone is an all-around block used in buildings, basements, tunnels, roads, paths and many other things.

Survival Mode
In Survival mode, Stone is a useful resource. Stone can only be successfully mined with a Pickaxe and will drop Cobblestone, which is used in many crafting recipes and as a sturdy building material. As of Beta 1.9pre4 Stone can also be successfully mined with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch I and will then drop one stone block. If it is not mined with a pickaxe, then it will drop nothing. Cobblestone can be smelted into Smooth Stone again. Stone can be used as a building material as well and can be used in several crafting recipes.

As of Beta 1.9 pre1, Stone can be made by having lava flow on top of water. In previous versions the lava would replace the water and continue falling. Later, Beta 1.9 pre5 changed the texture of Stone.

History
Before Beta 1.9 pre-release 5 stone had a different texture:

Retired Modes

 * Survival Test - Explosion resistant, drops Cobblestone when mined.
 * Indev - Acted similarly to Beta, cannot be crafted into anything.
 * Infdev - Acted similarly to Beta, cannot be crafted into anything.
 * Alpha - Same as Beta but couldn't be crafted into stone bricks or redstone repeaters.

Trivia

 * After air, stone is the second most common block found in a normal map.

Stein Stone/es Pierre Kő 돌 Steen Kamień Камень 石头