Word: methylized
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South Africa's bootleg native drink, skokiaan (subject of a recent U.S. hit tune), is usually mixed by "skokiaan queens" who know how to spike it with enough methyl alcohol to provide the jolt that thrills but does not kill. The balance is so easily upset that natives often go mad or blind from the skokiaan they buy in the shebeens of the native quarters...
...natives who came upon a deserted railway tank car near Durban last week recognized the lettering "alcohol" on the car, but the prefix "methyl" meant nothing to them. Agog with the prospect of a gay weekend, they drained off 22 gallons of methyl alcohol still in the bottom of the tank and carried it off in a big black drum to be mixed into home brew. But first they decided to have a quick taste all around...
...finished product. Some drove souped-up Ford sedans with the tops chopped, i.e., lowered, others built bullet-shaped racers from aircraft tanks, called them "Lakesters" for the dry lakes they race on. The engines gleamed like platinum; for fuel some burned an explosive mixture of methyl alcohol and nitromethane. "Fuel?" snorted an oil-company observer. "It belongs in the class with dynamite...
...When he ran short of cheap "sugarhead" moonshine to fill a big order consigned to Atlanta's Negro slums, 360-lb. Bootlegger John R. ("Fat") Hardy whipped up a substitute. Police said that he bought a 54-gallon drum of poisonous methyl alcohol, often used for hot-rod fuel, and mixed it with well water, peach flavoring, regular moonshine and a "beading oil" calculated to make it foam when shaken. Seventyseven gallons were delivered. Within hours Atlanta's Grady Negro Clinic began to fill with men & women who panted, frothed at the mouth and writhed in horrible convulsions...
...dangerous to be allowed off the reservation. But it is inviting industrial scientists to send samples to be exposed to their radiation. Their hot blasts of gamma rays may prove to have valuable industrial properties. They can start or speed up chemical reactions, turn certain liquids (e.g., methyl methacrylate) into solid plastics. Their most valuable application may be in food processing, for their gamma rays reportedly kill microorganisms without heating the food material or making it radioactive...