1. A Spoonful of Sugar made the Crude Oil go down
Originally a byproduct of drilling for table salt , former encounter with oil were considered a nuisance . It was either scooped up and disposed of , or dowse up in a rag , wrung out , and peddled as medicine . At the prison term , oil was think of as a cure all for everything - from headaches to rheumatoid arthritis to deafness . A nursing bottle of fossil oil - medical specialty with a picture of a derrick drilling for salt give George Bissell , the same guy cable who figured out oil could turn into kerosene , the notion that he could utilize similar technology to drill for rock’n’roll oil . ( More atAn Empire of Wealth )
2. Petroleum means “rock oil” in Latin
Yep . petra : a rock + oleum : oil .
3. Oil isn’t actually stored or shipped in barrels
4. The first oil was stored in whiskey barrels
So , why on the dot are barrels the social unit of measurement for rock oil ? chiefly , because the first oilman used whisky bbl to collect the rock oil after striking their first gushers . According toThe Prize , oil certainly gushed , and at one point oil was priced down so much ( or cask were in such demand & scarcity ) thatthe wooden bbl was worth double as much as the crude oil in it .
5. Oil drink your milkshake
" And I ’m not kid . That ’s actually true , " said cinematographer Robert Elswit on
CNN ’s Oscar Blog
.
6. Oil saved the whales from extinction
Oil ’s first use was to replace hulk blubber in lamp . That ’s right , before petroleum , as early on as 1645 , giant oil was used to light lamps and fatness was used to make candle wax . Sperm whales had oil higher-ranking to other giant , and had larger heads filled with spermaceti , a waxy substance that made the unspoilt candles . By the 1770s , New England was export 3 - 4,000 pounds of spermaceti candle a twelvemonth . But whale became less and less abundant due to excess whaling , and by the early 1850s the oil became a scarce commodity that demanded a mellow price .
Other forms of light were explored , include a form of turpentine and convert ember Jack-tar into kerosene . eventually , a prof constitute George Bissell gestate that " rock candy oil " could be turn into kerosene .
Learn more about what Diana learned today , here .
