environmentalhistory.org

wLoao TIL: Mercury was required for felting fabrics, especially hats. Hatters in the 1800’s had chronic mercury toxicity that caused mental instability thus dubbing the term “mad hatters disease” or “mad as a hatter”- and was the primary plight that Louis Carroll developed the mad hatter character around.
O9Ne TIL Henry Ford believed ethanol was the future of fuel and said: “There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”