Nazis can’t steal your shit if it’s all dissolved in acid

Mar. 6th, 2019 08:36 am
roadrunnertwice: DTWOF's Lois in drag. Dialogue: "Dude, just rub a little Castrol 30 weight into it. Works for me." (Castrol (Lois))

Here’s an absolutely buck wild story from the Wikipedia page for aqua regia:

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.

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Not a didread post

Aug. 7th, 2012 11:20 pm
roadrunnertwice: Ray pulling his head off. Dialogue: "DO YOU WANT SOME FRITTATA?" (FRITTATA (Achewood))
Uh, this book is a hell of an eye-opener:

To make cock-ale, take ten gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better, parboil the cock, flea him and stamp him in a stone mortar til his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flea him), then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves: put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel. In a week or nine days' time bottle it up, fill the bottles to just above the neck, and give it the time to ripen as other ale.

You dry-hopped your shit with a pulverized mostly-raw rooster. SURELY THOU SHITTETH ME. But no, this is a thing. In fact, here's a bro who actually made it, although he wussed out and baked the chicken instead of just stomping the fuck out of it. (Psssshhh.)
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(no subject)

Feb. 14th, 2008 12:49 pm
roadrunnertwice: Me looking up at the camera, wearing big headphones and a striped shirt. (Hat and apple)
Polaroid to stop manufacturing instant film

I've never had that intense connection to film that a lot of my artier friends have, and I pretty much welcomed the digital takeover without looking back. (Well, okay, I feel twinges; especially when looking at faded-out color prints from the late '70s.) But you know, when I was a kid and someone would whip out one of those whirring beasts, watching that picture slowly emerge from the murk felt like real, live, irrefutable magic.

I wonder if it seemed like magic to kids who are 8 years old today? Did the digital takeover make that go away, or was there something inherently amazing about that bizarre, right in plain sight alchemy? Better ask quick, I guess.
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