Romans ventured deeper into Wales than thought, road discovery shows
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022...very-shows
INTRO: The awe-inspiring beauty of the Preseli Hills and the surrounding wild moorlands have long drawn visitors to north Pembrokeshire in Wales. Now an archaeologist has found evidence that even the Romans were drawn to the area, with the discovery of an ancient road showing they travelled farther west across Britain than previously thought.
Dr Mark Merrony, a Roman specialist, tutor at Oxford University and “a native of Pembrokeshire”, said the road had been completely missed. “This thing is just extraordinary. I’m astonished,” he said.
“I think they’ll go crazy in Wales over this because it’s pushing the Roman presence much more across Pembrokeshire. There’s this perception that the Romans didn’t go very far in Wales, but actually they were all over Wales.”
He said antiquarians in the late 17th and early 19th centuries had embraced the existence of a Roman road and it had been marked on 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps. “But the idea was then rejected and removed from those maps,” he said.
Merrony spoke of finding a section of perfectly preserved Roman road buried in peat and further evidence in sunken lanes and low causeways barely discernible today but which followed straight routes and worked round hill contours “with perfect economy”, all typically Roman... (MORE - details)
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/HvdwPJmmGDE
The man who accidentally killed the most people in history
https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA
EXCERPT: Charles Kettering wanted to find an additive which would increase the octane rating of ordinary fuel and eliminate knocking in high-compression engines. So he hired a 27-year-old engineer Thomas Midgley Jr. Midgley experimented with all sorts of compounds...
[...] On December 3 1921, after five years of working on the problem, Midgley found what he thought was the perfect solution, tetraethyl lead. That's a lead atom right there in the center. This additive was exactly what he was looking for. It stopped the knocking, it didn't smell. It was cheap to produce and readily available. Best of all, you only needed one part in 1000, for it to be effective.
In a call to Kettering, Midgley said, can you imagine how much money we're going to make with this? We're going to make $200 million, maybe even more. That is over 3 billion in today's dollars. Now for his discovery, the American Chemical Society gave him the prestigious Nichols award, and they asked him to do a series of public talks, but Midgley declined.
He and Kettering patented the process for making Tetra ethyl led, and they called their new additive Ethyl, perhaps so it might be confused with another common additive ethyl alcohol they made no mention of lead. Then they teamed up with three of America's largest corporations...
[...] Their marketing was brilliant. No man can look at the amazing record of accomplishment here in this research division, without confidence that these men are going ahead with an eye to the future, looking for new facts and principles, which will make things better and make life easier for all of us...
The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IV3dnLzthDA
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022...very-shows
INTRO: The awe-inspiring beauty of the Preseli Hills and the surrounding wild moorlands have long drawn visitors to north Pembrokeshire in Wales. Now an archaeologist has found evidence that even the Romans were drawn to the area, with the discovery of an ancient road showing they travelled farther west across Britain than previously thought.
Dr Mark Merrony, a Roman specialist, tutor at Oxford University and “a native of Pembrokeshire”, said the road had been completely missed. “This thing is just extraordinary. I’m astonished,” he said.
“I think they’ll go crazy in Wales over this because it’s pushing the Roman presence much more across Pembrokeshire. There’s this perception that the Romans didn’t go very far in Wales, but actually they were all over Wales.”
He said antiquarians in the late 17th and early 19th centuries had embraced the existence of a Roman road and it had been marked on 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps. “But the idea was then rejected and removed from those maps,” he said.
Merrony spoke of finding a section of perfectly preserved Roman road buried in peat and further evidence in sunken lanes and low causeways barely discernible today but which followed straight routes and worked round hill contours “with perfect economy”, all typically Roman... (MORE - details)
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/HvdwPJmmGDE
The man who accidentally killed the most people in history
https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA
EXCERPT: Charles Kettering wanted to find an additive which would increase the octane rating of ordinary fuel and eliminate knocking in high-compression engines. So he hired a 27-year-old engineer Thomas Midgley Jr. Midgley experimented with all sorts of compounds...
[...] On December 3 1921, after five years of working on the problem, Midgley found what he thought was the perfect solution, tetraethyl lead. That's a lead atom right there in the center. This additive was exactly what he was looking for. It stopped the knocking, it didn't smell. It was cheap to produce and readily available. Best of all, you only needed one part in 1000, for it to be effective.
In a call to Kettering, Midgley said, can you imagine how much money we're going to make with this? We're going to make $200 million, maybe even more. That is over 3 billion in today's dollars. Now for his discovery, the American Chemical Society gave him the prestigious Nichols award, and they asked him to do a series of public talks, but Midgley declined.
He and Kettering patented the process for making Tetra ethyl led, and they called their new additive Ethyl, perhaps so it might be confused with another common additive ethyl alcohol they made no mention of lead. Then they teamed up with three of America's largest corporations...
[...] Their marketing was brilliant. No man can look at the amazing record of accomplishment here in this research division, without confidence that these men are going ahead with an eye to the future, looking for new facts and principles, which will make things better and make life easier for all of us...
The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History