#sarahcatherinefirth

[qingyi-deng-blog]

Body Language

[sarahthefirth]

Be careful where you take a leak!

[sarahthefirth]

Space Cat.

[sarahthefirth]

Daily Zen

[sarahthefirth]

Back in 1675, German alchemist Hennig Brand became convinced that gold could somehow be distilled from human urine. He kept fifty buckets of urine in his cellar for months. Through various recondite processes he turned the urine into a noxious waxy substance. None of it yielded gold but after some time it began to glow. When exposed to air it burst into flames. Brand at first tried to keep the method secret but later began to sell the recipe for this "light bearing" phosphorus. In 1678 the secret that it was made from urine leaked out to Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel in Sweden who at first called on Swedish soldiers to provide the copious amounts of raw material needed. Later, Robert Boyle (pictured) was the first to use phosphorus to ignite sulfur-tipped wooden splints, forerunners of our modern matches, in 1680. This mastery of phosphorus led Sweden to become and remain the leading producer of matches.

[sarahthefirth]

Alanta and Jason at Yum Cha