Teotihuacan Mercury

[shadowinthelight]

Nah... I'm expecting a future MIB movie to tell us he's just as alien as Dennis Rodman...

As is Anne Hathaway...

And I suspect, Scarlett Johansson is too, once you get under the skin

Too hot to be human? I can agree with that theory.

[Jabberwonky]

Yes, that's a miner floating on a pool of mercury. It's dense enough to float a human bean...

Can human beings also float on it?
What's a human bean look like, anyway?

Audrey II? If eating beans causes humans to be flatulent, then eating humans causes beans to be... what?

I'd guess that the photo of the miner sitting on a tubfull of mercury might have been taken in California during the later years of the Gold Rush... or possibly in Alaska a bit later on. In either case, mercury was an important if dangerous part of the gold-mining industry. Partially sorted and pulverized gold-bearing ore was run through a "bath" in mercury, and the gold would dissolve into the liquid mercury and form an amalgam of the two metals. The gold-saturated mercury was then distilled away and captured for re-use, leaving the gold behind.

Nasty stuff. We're still dealing with mercury contamination in San Francisco Bay, more than a century later... runoff from the mercury mines south of here, and from the gold-mining sites in the Sierras. They're still doing some mitigation work at the old Almaden mercury mine, south of San Jose.

It was a big business at the time, though... and cut-throat-competitive. One big company managed to gain control of most of the mercury production, buying up all of the smaller mines, leaving the gold-miners no choice but to deal only with Amalgamated American Amalgams. "When the mercury rises, we're hot for your business!"

I first saw that picture in a Time Life book on, probably, geography. We had a series of Time/Life books on 'The World'. If I remember correctly, it's a South African miner at a mercury mine. But I haven't seen that book in almost 35 years, so I might not be all that correct.

[Jabberwonky]

Yes, that's a miner floating on a pool of mercury. It's dense enough to float a human bean...

Can human beings also float on it?
What's a human bean look like, anyway?

That much exposure to free mercury he's probably not bean a human for years now...

[TazManiac]

Choose carefully-



Mirrors seem to have Mercury Envy...

[Catawampus]

I first saw that picture in a Time Life book on, probably, geography. We had a series of Time/Life books on 'The World'. If I remember correctly, it's a South African miner at a mercury mine. But I haven't seen that book in almost 35 years, so I might not be all that correct.

October 1972 edition of National Geographic Magazine. I think that he may be one of the cinnabar miners from the Almadén district of Spain.

[Jabberwonky]

Choose carefully-



Mirrors seem to have Mercury Envy...

Dayquil or Nyquil?


(two of my favorite Pokemons)

[Alkarii]

Choose carefully-



Mirrors seem to have Mercury Envy...

Dayquil or Nyquil?


(two of my favorite Pokemons)

Mommy says I'm not supposed to take candy from strangers...

[Jabberwonky]

And they don't get much stranger than this lot...

[Catawampus]

And they don't get much stranger than this lot...

*takes another sip of tasty Aztec mercury*

Say what, chap?