Sandstone

Sandstone is a solid block. It can both be found naturally at the bottom of sand stacks and crafted with 4 blocks of sand in a square, and thus does not require the use of a crafting table.

Function and behavior
Sandstone's unique style allows for desert-themed architecture. It can be quickly obtained in order to build a shelter and survive the first night in Survival when you spawn in a desert biome.

Unlike sand, sandstone is unaffected by gravity and will not fall if placed without a supporting block.

Placed sandstone can be harvested with any pickaxe. Breaking a sandstone block by hand destroys the block but drops no resources; it takes slightly longer to mine it with bare hands than wood.

Sandstone naturally occurs at the bottom of areas of sand to ensure that sand does not start out floating. However, if a lake occurs in the space it may carve away the sandstone and result in unsupported sand.

This block can be crafted into a sandstone slab.

Sandstone's blast resistance is similar to sand or grass, and markedly less than wood or stone.

Sandstone used to take a very long time to mine using a pickaxe. Even using a diamond pickaxe, the only block that took longer to break was obsidian. This was fixed in a later patch.

History
This block started out as a mod, by TheRedScare, found here. Sandstone was then added in the version Beta 1.2. In Beta 1.3, sandstone slabs could be crafted, and sandstone can be found at the bottom of naturally generated sand.