0850-12-01 00:00:00
Chinese scientists had been playing with saltpeter — a common name for the powerful oxidizing agent potassium nitrate — in medical compounds for centuries when one industrious individual thought to mix it with sulfur and charcoal. The result was a mysterious powder from which, observers remarked in a text dated from the mid-9th century, “smoke and flames result, so that [the scientists’] hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.” -14th century, when the Chinese created a high-nitrate, multi-formula mix of gunpowder that allowed the firing of projectiles from hand guns and rifles.
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