Engineers at U. of Ill. apply over 1,500,000 lbs of pressure onto a 3 foot tall, solid concrete cylinder - [Consider turning you

I attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in March 2013 to give a talk about asteroid impacts. It was part of their very popular Engineering Open House day, which had lots of activities. One of these was crushing concrete cylinders with a mechanical press that can apply 3 *million* pounds of force. I figured the cylinder would just crack and crumble. I was wrong.