Guy walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under arm.
Says to the bartender:
"I’ll take a beer, and one for the road."
Samuel GuthrieDied 19 Oct 1848 (born 1782).American chemist and physician who first discovered chloroform. He also invented the percussion priming powder for firearms, which superseded flints. He performed experiments in a laboratory near his house, and had a mill about a mile away for manufacturing large quantities of this powder and other explosives (e.g., potassium chlorate and mercury fulminate). In 1830 he devised a process that rapidly converted potato starch into molasses. He made chloroform in 1831 by distilling chloride of lime with alcohol in a copper vessel, prior to the independent discoveries of Soubeiran (France,1831) and Justus Liebig (Germany, 1832). Guthrie used chloroform during an amputation surgery in his hometown of Sackets Harbor, N.Y.« |
