ROMAN ACID LUNGS

                 Sorry folks, but this is the last post on here for at least two and a half months. I know, I know. Try to hold back the tears. It's all right. No really stop, you're making this awkward.

I could maybe be convinced to continue, if someone made a charitable
donation upwards of $100 dollars. 

                 Since I started this think with Mummies, I thought I should ended it with some Screaming Mummies. But come on, there has got to be a way more brutal topic than screaming undead pansies. Like say maybe, 2,000 YEAR OLD ANCIENT ROMAN SOLDIERS THAT VIOLENTLY DIED IN A SMALL TUNNEL FROM HAVING SULFURIC ACID IN THIER LUNGS.

Roman's were metal as shit.

                   Alright, sounds good. So back in 1933, when archeology mainly consisted of molesting historic artifacts, a French archeologist named Robert du Mesnil du Buisson was looking for ancient Roman armor in the Syrian city of Dura. His motives being that he is French, and as previously stated, the French have been known to do some crazy stuff. Buisson hit the dead Roman people jackpot when, exploring a tunnel, found 19 dead Roman soldiers stacked in a haphazard pile. He also found a Persian soldier in a tunnel that connected to that tunnel. The strange thing was that all the bodies appeared to be running away from something.

Look, the skeleton of a dead Persian warrior is waving at you. You
should probably wave back. Don't want to offend the undead.  

                     Buisson imagined bloody melee combat killing the men, but there simply wasn't enough room in the tunnel. Also the remains suggested no such fight. The mystery may have been solved by Simon James, who recreated the scene and told this story:

"The Persians attempted to dig a tunnel under the Roman-held cities wall. the Romans heard the Persians working beneath the ground and steered their tunnel to intercept their enemies. The Roman tunnel was shallower than the Persian one, so the Romans planned to break in on the Persians from above. But there was no element of surprise for either side: The Persians could also hear the Romans coming.

So the Persians set a trap. Just as the Romans broke through, James said, they lit a fire in their own tunnel. Perhaps they had a bellows to direct the smoke, or perhaps they relied on the natural chimney effect of the shaft between the two tunnels. Either way, they threw sulfur and bitumen on the flames. One of the Persian soldiers was overcome and died, a victim of his own side's weapon. The Romans met with the choking gas, which turned to sulfuric acid in their lungs."

                     James' theory is supported by samples of burnt sulfur and bitumen that were collected off of the walls of the tunnel. 

                     So there you go, one of the first documented uses of chemical warfare. 

Man this was a pretty dark post...

                   

Fig No-Relations-to-Sir-Isaac Newton

         Here we go. The history of Fig Newtons. Because why not?                                                      And if you don't know what a Fig Newton is, it's a scrumptious cookie filled with hatred. See below

"Why not?" Being a common question when talking about
Fig Newtons. 

          Ok, so once upon a time in a magical place called "Ohio," a humble cookie maker named Charles M. Roser thought up the Fig Newton cookie. Or at least he is credited with inventing the recipe. Then, around the year of 1890, Roser sold the cookie recipe to the Kennedy Biscuit Works (which is now called Nabisco). The Kennedy Biscuit Works mass produced the cookie, and that is why you can enjoy the slightly-putred taste of figs inside of sugar-bread. The end.

The knight then force-fed the dragon a Fig Newton,
at which point the dragon turned purple and died.

            That was pretty short huh? Want to know more facts about Fig Newtons that you will undoubtedly annoy your friends with? Well then I guess it would be rude of me not to further enlighten you. So here you go:

              In 1891, James Henry Mitchell invented a machine that made mass production of the Fig Newton possible. The machine worked as a double funnel. There was one funnel on the inside of the device that supplied the jam, and a funnel outside the inner funnel that pumped out the dough. This created a long tube of Fig Newton. The machine would then cut and stamp the cookie, making it ready for packaging. 

             And, contrary to popular belief, the Fig Newton's name was not inspired by Sir Isaac Newton. Rather, it was inspired by the Massachusetts town of Newton. Kennedy Biscuits had a habit of naming their cookies after local towns. 

But this guy does look like his favorite cookie would be
a Fig Newton. Or maybe an oatmeal cookie. 

             

Kermit the Murdering Extortionist

                 Jim Henson, if you didn't know, created and originally voiced a little tv show called The Muppets.

Pretty underground, it didn't teach an entire generation basic
life skills or anything. 

               One of the main characters, or arguably the main character, is a frog named Kermit. Kermit is known for many things, chief among them are his lovable if not slightly melancholy songs...

Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor

                 ... And being one of the most recognizable puppets from the late 50's to the late 80's. Only then being rivaled by Big Bird. But before Kermit made his first appearance in 1955, Henson had a sort of proto-Kermit. And its name was Wilkins.

                Yup, thats proto-Kermit on the right. He hadn't really morphed into frog form yet. And that depressed looking thing on the left is named Wotkins. And they were both part of Henson's many, many Wilkins Coffee commercials. Each ad is only about 10 seconds, and they're all roughly the same.

So it starts off with Wilkins saying how great the coffee is, then asking Wotkins if he drinks Wilkin brand coffee. Wotkins says no, then Wilkins inflicts bodily harm/murders Wotkins and makes a joke. Wotkins method of murdering Wotkins includes running him over with a steam roller, pushing him out of a hot air balloon, throwing knives at him, shooting him out of a cannon, and full-out shanking him.

               In one commercial, after shooting Wotkins in the head with a pistol, Wilkins turns to the camera and asks if anyone else doesn't like Wilkins Coffee. The implication here being that if you didn't go buy Wilkins Coffee, Wilkins would murder you. 

It's always the one you'd least expect to kill you
because of your choice in coffee. 

              So as times changed, the Wilkins character changed too. He first became a humanoid lizard named, then later evolved into a green frog with banjo playing abilities. Hopefully one day Wilkins will return to the Muppets, possibly curb stomping Fozzie Bear out of rage that Wilkins Coffee no longer exists.

Never Did William Tell

                 Most everybody knows of William Tell. Or at least know he shot an apple off a kid's head with an arrow. Or maybe just "The William Tell Overture," which is the Lone Ranger Theme.

 

Insert pedophile joke here

                 However, everybody knows the legend of William Tell by heart. The story goes like this: In the early 1300's, what would become their country was held by Austria. One day, an official named Albrecht Gessler tried to force everyone in the village of Uri to bow to his hat. William Tell declined to do so, so Gessler demanded Tell to shoot an apple off his sons head with an arrow from 120 paces away. If he failed, both he and his son would be killed. 

Because, yaknow, hats.

                   So Tell grabbed two arrows and shot the apple off his kids head in one shot. When Gessler asked why Tell had grabbed two arrows, Tell told him that if he had missed with the first one, the second arrow would be for Gessler. Angry, Gessler ordered Tell to the dungeon, but he escaped and later killed Gessler. Tell's defiance inspired the people of Switzerland to rebel against their oppressors, and eventually form the Swiss Confederacy. 

                   But Swiss Tell never existed. In fact, the story is a rip off of a story involving a 10th century viking named Toko. Just like Tell, Toko had to shoot an apple off his sons head, and saved a second arrow for the man who forced him to do it. The only real difference is that Toko was extremely drunk and his son was running down a hill. 

The moral of the story is that the Vikings did/discovered/killed everything first.

                 Tell's story was also supposed to have inspired the Swiss people to destroy various Austrian castles, but evidence showed that the castles in question had already been destroyed decades before Tell was supposed to exist.

                 Nonetheless, a survey from 2011 said that 60% of the Swiss people believe William Tell existed. Tell is such a strong force in Switzerland's culture that even today all Swiss exports have a little  crossbow symbol stamped on them in his honor. 

Along side Switzerland's other main exports, including cheese and fat kids blowing alphorns.

Sir Isaac Not-So-Newton. Alchemy Week pt.2

Sir Isaac Newton. Discoverer of gravity. Inventor of calculus. One of the top scientists that ever existed.

Wearer of magnificent locks. 

                   It turns out that Newton actually spent more of his time studying scripture and alchemy than   engaging in science stuffs. He was an extremely devout christian, and pretty much all-around crazy person. 

                   He spent enormous amounts of time trying to figure out the exact measurements of the Temple of Solomon, which he believed would allow him to predict the exact day of the apocalypse. 

The face a insanity.

                  Newton was also a self proclaimed alchemist. And he wasn't even a revolutionary alchemist either, he attempted to pursue theories that had long since been discarded (by people who believed alchemy was possible). His main alchemic goal was to create the philosophers stone, which could turn base metals in gold and grant humans immortality. 

Pretty much a way more sad version of this.

                 

P for Phosphorus! Alchemy Week pt. 1

                Many Medieval and Renaissance philosophers were brought into the world of alchemy by the allure of it's ultimate prize, transforming base metals into gold. The race was on, the first alchemist to discover the recipe would doubtlessly become the richest man in the world! The only problem was no one had a clue as to what they were supposed to do. Some folks attempted to combine various metals and concoctions, and some other people attempted a much more... unorthodox approach.

Thanks Google Image!

                  Yup! Back in the day, urine was thought to contain gold. The gold was thought to be the source of the yellow coloring in urine (spoiler alert: It isn't). Anyway, this brings us to Hennig Brand.

Pictured: Brand doing SCIENCE!

                    In 1669, Brand was fiddling around with a few hundred liters of urine in order to extract gold from the stuff, when he discovered Phosphorus (pictured above). His recipe for the concoction is as follows:

                     1) Boil urine to reduce it to a thick syrup.

                     2) Heat until red oil distills from it, and draw that off.

                     3) Allow the remainder to cool, leaving a black spongey upper part and a salty lower part. 

                     4) Discard salt, mix red oil back with black spongey material. 

                     5) Heat mixture strongly for 16 hours.

                     6) First white fumes come off, then oil, then phosphorus.

                     7) The phosphorus may be passed into cold water to solidify. 

                     Brand used 5,500 liters of urine to produce just 120 grams of phosphorus. 

Yes, 5,500 liters of urine is a lot. And there is not documented information
on how long it took for him to produce that much. Probably a billion years.

                   ... Which is funny because he could have produced around 605 times more phosphorus if he didn't remove the salts, which contained most of the necessary nitrates.

                    But for a man of his time, accidentally discovering phosphorus must have been pretty cool.