Word: silver
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...storm, the longest-lived hurricane on record. While instrument-packed planes monitored the tricky "bombing" runs, an Air Force C-130 transport and two U.S. Navy A-6 Intruder jets flying at 22,000 feet dropped hundreds of small explosive cylindrical canisters that sprayed tiny particles of silver iodide in the area outside the eye of the hurricane...
...years ago, a sociologist suggested that the empire had withered away after its upper classes died off from lead poisoning caused by lead-lined drinking and cooking vessels. Now a geochemist has concluded that Rome's troubles derived largely from the loss of its supply of silver, which fatally disrupted the Roman monetary system...
During a study of air pollution, Caltech's Claire Patterson decided to investigate the historical worldwide distribution of lead. Knowing that lead was obtained in ancient times as a byproduct of silver mining, he made a study of silver mining and stockpile records and discovered a significant fact: accidental loss diminishes a country's stock of silver at a rapid rate unless the metal is continually replenished from mines. Rome's silver, much of it used for coins, was abraded by handling, lost by corrosion and reworking, covered by soil or ashes, sunk in shipwrecks or buried...
Bleak Future. Although man began to mine silver on a small scale in about 2500 B.C., Patterson says that it was not until Rome took control of the silver mines in Iberia that it was able to attain the economic strength necessary for the rapid expansion of the empire. Silver production, mainly in Iberia, peaked between 50 B.C. and A.D. 100, when some 30,000 tons were extracted; Roman legions were furnishing 30,000 fresh slaves a year then to maintain the ranks of miners at 150,000. By the 3rd century A.D., as production steadily decreased, Roman coins...
Patterson notes that the glory of Greece also coincided with the productivity of her vast Laurion silver mines: when the silver gave out, so did Athenian power. After the decline of Rome, Patterson says, the next great silver discovery, in Central and Northern Europe, coincided with the end of the Dark Ages. Although silver losses have continued at a high rate-Patterson estimates that in the U.S. alone about half a billion dollars worth of silver coins were returned to the earth accidentally from 1900 to 1950-a sharp drop in silver mining will no longer have the disastrous effects...