Friday, November 27, 2015

Factoid of the day

via Presurfer:


 Carl Scheele managed to keep his name attached to Scheele’s green. Mix sodium carbonate and arsenic oxide together in a solution and you get sodium arsenic—a combination of sodium, arsenic, and oxygen. That gets mixed in with copper sulfate to produce a copper arsenite precipitate which can cheaply and easily dye material green....In 1982, British chemist David Jones famously speculated that the green wallpaper hung in Napoleon’s residence in St. Helena poisoned him with arsenic and led to his death. The theory is much-disputed, but also very popular.
Wikipedia has a list of people who may have suffered from lead poisoning.

Clare Booth Luce's erratic behavior as Ambassador to Italy was eventually blamed on Arsenic from her wall paper. More about Luce HERE.

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