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August 27, 2004
Strange History
Interview
with Steve Silverman author of the book Einstein's
Refrigerator
Mike
Carruthers:
IThere are lots of interesting stories that never make it
into the history books like Albert Einstein's' failed attempts
to make refrigerators.
Steve
Silverman :
He had read in the newspaper about a family that had
been killed by ammonia gas that had leaked out of the refrigerator.
Steve Silverman
author of the book Einstein's
Refrigerator And Other Stories From The Flipside Of History
...
So he got
together with Leo Szilard who's the father of the nuclear chain
reaction and the two of them for about ten years designed refrigerators.
Freon was invented very shortly after that and basically put
Einstein and Szilard out of business.
Do you know
the story of Vaseline?
This story
starts with a guy named Robert Cheseborough of Cheseborough-Ponds
fame. In 1859 he was a chemist in New York City and headed down
toTitusville Pennsylvania where the big oil rush was going on.
And he heard of this paraffin like material that was sticking
to the oilrigs, the riggers were complaining about it but he
also overheard them say that it helps speed up healing. So he
took some of this stuff back to his laboratory and purified
it and came up with Vaseline. Everyday of his life from that
point on he believed so much in the stuff that he swallowed
one teaspoon of it every single day.
And then
there's the story of Mike the headless chicken who belonged
to Lloyd and Clara Olsen back in the forties.
And they
were out butchering chickens and one of them after they were
all done were still walking around and he came back the next
day and there was the chicken still alive and they nicknamed
him Mike and Mike ended up living for about a year and a half
without his head.
You can
link to Steve's
website from ours, somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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