Emperor Napoleon III offered a prize to anyone who could find "a suitable substance to replace butter for the navy and less prosperous classes." The French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouries had...
The Warren Medical Museum in Boston is a fascinating place, named after Dr. John Collins Warren who performed the first surgery under ether anesthesia in 1846. On view is the actual flask that...
All fireworks rely on a combustion process that has three basic requirements: some sort of fuel to burn, a supply of oxygen, and a source of energy to initiate the reaction between the fuel and the...
The thick liquid used to be called "oil of vitriol," since it was originally made by the distillation of "green vitriol," or iron sulfate as we know it today. It was so corrosive and nasty that...
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