My Celtic blood knows from whence it came.
Actually, my ancestors on my mother's side came from Cornwall and my father's side came from Wales. No castles in my history that I know of. My Fourth Great Grandfather had a big mansion, but I couldn't find a link to a picture of it. It still stands, though. He wrote a book about fly fishing, probably one of the first such books. I did find a statue of him. cornwallgb.com While I was looking for the picture of his house, I found out that he isolated and named several chemical elements, including aluminum, barium, magnesium, and sodium. He made a number of inventions, including the first arc light and the first battery, neither of which worked very well until they were refined by others. King George III knighted him because he invented the carbide lamp, which revolutionized the coal mining industry. King George III, as you may recall, was the loser of the war with some of his pesky colonies.
My Fourth Great Grandfather died from sniffing too much NO2, nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, a compound he discovered. He was probably the first glue sniffer. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who sniffed stuff too, attended some of his lectures.
My Fourth Great Grandfather also wrote bad poetry, but he is probably best known for a poem written ABOUT him.
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated Gravy
He suffered the odium
Of having discovered Sodium
Amazing what you can find out on the web, isn't it? |
