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...