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. It was added in the Beta 1.2 update on January 13, 2011.

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 a 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 dirt, 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
Sandstone was added in Minecraft Beta 1.2.

In Beta 1.3:
 * Sandstone can now be used to craft a sandstone slab.
 * Sandstone is now found at the bottom of naturally generated sand.