8 ms·
It woyld be funny to me if it turned out the secret was urine instead of seawater. One of the bits of received wisdom i got from my grandfather was peeing on y
by smackeyacky 3y ago
It woyld be funny to me if it turned out the secret was urine instead of seawater. One of the bits of received wisdom i got from my grandfather was peeing on your hands toughened them up. He claimed it as a bit of advice he was given on his first day chopping hardwood for a steam engine at a tin mine. I figured it as a first day prank like being sent to find headlight fluid in modern times but he said it was true.
Before major industrialisation, people used what was at hand. I think the peeing on your hands thing has been long debunked but in roman concrete it may have worked.
- thworp 3y agoUrea is very effective at moisturizing and is an ingredient in many heavy-duty lotions, so peeing is probably overkill but not without benefit.
- fbdab103 3y agoPractical questions abound. Do you wash your hands after peeing on them? Do you pat dry? Towel dry? How do you close up your pants without spreading a non-negligible amount of urine onto your pants? Would you want to pee on your hands every trip to the bathroom or more a once-per-day thing?
- Eumenes 3y agoWater jackets for machine guns would often be filled with urine by soldiers if water wasn't available.
- a_c 3y agoThanks for making my day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_0THARUP9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_0THARUP9A
- bigbacaloa 3y agoLots of baseball players used to do this.
- interestica 3y agoYou're in for a big surprise: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/from-gunpowder-to-teeth-whitener-the-science-behind-historic-uses-of-urine-442390/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/from-gunpowder...
- chaosjevil 3y agoIt's a bit off-topic, but the role of urine in teeth cleaning reminds me one of Catullus' poems, poking fun at someone who was a bit too eager to laugh/smile as trying to show off how much urine he drunk. For context: Celtiberians used urine to brush their teeth. The Romans were aware of that, but they thought that it was disgusting. (The poem is Catullus 39, if anyone is interested. Link: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Catullus_39 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Catullus_39 )
- mymythisisthis 3y agoFor most of human history pee urine was left to get stale, turning it into ammonia, and used for doing laundry. Washing clothes in ammonia is really great at getting out oil and grease stains. Though now you just buy ammonia directly from a good hardware store.
- qup 3y agoHi, nerdy hacker here, could use further advice: Can I screw the ammonia up, like how bleach ruins clothes? Any recommendation on amount? Do I add it to a wash cycle? I have a lot of grease-stained shirts that are some of my favorites.
- shrubble 3y agoMixing ammonia and bleach gets you basically mustard gas, so be cautious about what is in any other detergent you use at the same time...
- mcpackieh 3y agoSpecifically it makes chloramine gas, the same stuff that (in fairly low concentrations) makes swimming pools stink. It can be lethal so definitely take it seriously, although it's not nearly so gnarly as real mustard gas. Here's an incident where a woman inadvertently made chloramine gas in an enclosed space while cleaning and was breathing it for 30 minutes. It nearly killed her and she was hospitalized for a week: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199909093411115 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199909093411115
- leetrout 3y agoHere's one where a restaurant manager died after someone mixed cleaners right on the floor. https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/us/massachusetts-buffalo-wild-wings-worker-death-cleaning-agent-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/us/massachusetts-buffalo-wild...
- pfdietz 3y ago
- tomjakubowski 3y agoBaseball player Moises Alou famously claimed he peed on his hands to ward off calluses. He's one of the few modern players not to wear batting gloves. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/05/can-peeing-on-your-hands-make-them-tough.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/05/can-peeing-on-yo...
- nonethewiser 3y agoJorge Posada and Vlad Guerrero too. All from the Caribbean.
- twic 3y agoI would expect the opposite - urea is a keratolytic, so it should break down thickened skin, and make the hands less tough. That said, urine is 1-2% urea, and typical medical urea solutions are 5% or more, so i wouldn't expect much of an effect.
- nonethewiser 3y agoLots of baseball players used to do this. Particularly Dominicans. It mostly stopped in favor of batting gloves but some players continued doing it such as Moises Alou.