Aqua Regia

From Wikipedia by way of Hacker News...

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar, one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving, contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation who recast and presented the medals to Laue and Franck.

Incidentally, Hacker News, which is an offshoot of Paul Graham's Y-Combinator, is one of my favorite haunts. Great stuff you won't find anywhere else.

Leo's Twitter Updates for 2008-08-29

• McCain looks like he's having second thoughts. Can you see Palin as our President? I'm having a hard time with that. #
• @timburks Hmm. You're kidding right? Biden vs Palin. Can't wait for the VP debate. #

Leo's Twitter Updates for 2008-08-27

• via TWiT Army: @engy The TWiT t-shirts and the "Don't Bug Me I'm Waxing My Yacht" are from http://artandtechtees.com <http://artandt ... #
• via TWiT Army: @evan suggested turning on the queues setting in config. Seems to have helped a lot. Thanks @evan! #laconica #
• via TWiT Army: @comptr: @kshep runs a bridge at http://bridge.kshep.net - once you set it up your posts here automatically go to Twitter #
• via TWiT Army: I can't believe Roz is arriving in Hawaii in five days and Abby is leaving for France in seven. #
• via TWiT Army: I turned on "non-local messages in public timeline" - I'll turn them off and you'll only see TA posts on TA. The Twitter ... #
• via TWiT Army: @frogman54 I don't think it's unnecessary to unsub for TA's sake - notice queueing seems to have fixed the slowdowns. #
• via TWiT Army: (psst don't tell anyone, but I like TWiT Army SO much better than #twitter, #pownce, #jaiku, #plurk, #rejaws, etc etc.) #
• via TWiT Army: Thanks @alexmiller - I think #mysql wasn't the problem after all. Plenty of resources, just needed a queue. #
• via TWiT Army: @frogman54 at this point I've applied everything I know of. Check it now and see if it's working in #ie6. I can't believ ... #
• via TWiT Army: @sethgoldstein - stay tuned. #twhirl support is in the works. #
• [twitarmy] @garyk - no, do whatever suits you. I was doing "via http://army.twit.tv" but that was too long and too promotional #
• [twitarmy] @frogman54 - ok I'm going to do it right now and you'll see why it's not going to work #
• [twitarmy] I like [twitarmy] - I'm switching to that. #
• @bingobaa Wow. Thanks bingo. I'll mention it on Security Now and my radio show this weekend. #

Leo's Twitter Updates for 2008-08-26

• Photog Bruce Dale is looking for a dbl-height Seagate drive like from the old XT for a shoot. Email badpix at brucedale.com if you have 1. #

Leo's Twitter Updates for 2008-08-25

• There's a bad drive in the RAID array for the twit/leoville/twitlive server. Softlayer is replacing it now. We'll be back up later tonight. #