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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Kentucky, post: 1387994, member: 33176&quot;]Playing with mercury from a broken thermometer or an old relay was lots of fun as a kid.&nbsp; One last trivia.&nbsp; The term &quot;Mad as a Hatter&quot; originated with the use of mercury in making hats - that is what I heard as a kid and it never made any sense.&nbsp; Top hats were made from felt which was composed of hair from different kinds of animals.&nbsp; Most prized was beaver hair, because it was waterproof mainly due to little hooks on the hairs which would cause the hairs to entangle and make a strong felt.&nbsp; However it was too expensive to hire Jim Bridger to go out and trap beavers all the time, so a cheaper alternative was used - rabbit fur.&nbsp; Now rabbit fur made a lousy low strength felt, so a treatment was found which caused the rabbit hair to split and thus entangle in making a felt.&nbsp; That treatment was to soak the hair in mercurious nitrate and other mercury compounds.&nbsp; Hatters would dip out armfulls of the soaking felt from the vats to spread out on the molds used to make the hats, thus they spent the days with a large portion of their bodies soaked in mercury compounds, to say nothing of the vapor they breathed.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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