the.com/galena
the metallic stone that radioed in WWI and poisoned Rome's plumbing for centuries
means Galena is the natural mineral form of lead sulfide, a soft, heavy, silvery-gray crystal that is the chief ore from which lead is extracted.
from From the Latin galena, the word Pliny the Elder and other Roman writers used for lead ore and the dross left over from smelting silver. The Romans already prized it — they smelted galena for the lead that lined their aqueducts and pipes (and slowly poisoned them). The name passed largely unchanged into the scientific vocabulary of mineralogy, where it still labels those bright cubic crystals that cleave like little gray dice.
- crystal radio
- Galena crystals detected early radio signals as cat's-whisker receivers
- lead source
- Primary ore of lead since ancient times
- perfect cubes
- Cleaves into near-perfect right-angle cubes naturally
- egyptian eyeliner
- Ground galena became kohl, the original eyeshadow
- silver bonus
- Often contains enough silver to mine profitably