And that's even leaving out the even older type of matches that in order to light them required dipping them into a small asbestos bottle filled with Sulphuric acid. And that process never, ever went wrong.
@hawkturkey Asbestos was used to make fireproof pots for centuries, it was one of earliest uses of it so there must be some process of sealing it or weaving the fibres tightly enough to hold liquid.
In Dracula (the novel), there's a scene where Jonathan Harker is forced to write home about how everything is fine and he's already well on his way home. That's when he knows he's about to be killed.
@@WouldntULikeToKnow.: Giant red flag... sounds like some of the little-known horrors of the Soviet Union (particularly the Stalin era). If you want an horror story, I would suggest the video _Nazinsky_ from the *Geographics* channel. Going back onto the subject of chemical weapons, even the Great Britain had been testing nerve agents on their own citizens, despite the highly illegal nature of the tests conducted at _Porton Down._
That's because they had socialist media back then. When the CIA was founded they took over all the union media and union leadership, so you don't have real labor activism anymore in this country - or independent media (for that matter).
This finally answers a question I had forgotten but was always in the back of my mind since I was a kid. I remember those old cartoons and cowboy movies where they'd light their match on their boot or the scruff of their beard etc., and I always thought that was strange because whenever I tried to imitate it, it obviously didn't work. I figured they wouldn't do that if it wasn't possible, but I thought that maybe there was just a trick to it that I didn't know. Now, thanks to this video, I know that it _is_ impossible with modern matches, but was very possible with matches from the time periods depicted in those old cartoons and movies. Thank you! I didn't know how much that was bothering me until now.
@TheBrodsterBoy And some with blue and green tips, for whatever reason. IDT there's Green Phosphorus or Blue Phosphorus, but... BTW, those are Storm Matches, generally.
As an add-on to those "old cartoons", did you know that Bugs Bunny's trope of munching on carrots is a reference to an old movie? In "It Happened One Night", Clark Gable eats a whole carrot in a scene. The reference stuck, and because of that, generations of kids have though erroneously that rabbits should eat carrots.
@@catatonicbug7522 bugs bunny is also the reason "Nimrod" is now used as a synonym for idiot. Nimrod was a famous hunter in Greek mythology and Bugs bunny sarcastically called Elmer Fuff this when he failed. Most of the audience didn't understand the reference and thought it was a synonym for moron
Right? I used to have a typical time machine fantasy about visiting the mid to late 1800s, but even with the benefit of all I know now, I feel like my fragile white ass would wind up in a pauper's grave
I was on a very similar thought thinking that my grandparents grandparents made it thru all of everything that killed other people to make my life possible its kind of the bigger thought ur the product of a very very very long win in reproduction all the things that your fore generation made it thru to u NUTS ABSOLUTELY MIND blowing
Uh, you know a lot of things you can buy are still being manufactured in countries without adequate regulations that protect them from severe health issues? Chances are pretty good you have something that risked someone's life to make.
So reminiscent of the "Radium Girls" (who painted clock dials with radium and dipped the the brushes in their mouths). Women having jobs (just remembered the Triangle Shirt Factory) was basically a death sentence in the old days.
Or the porcelain girls of the 1900's - who would be poisoned from the lead in the glazes used to paint porcelain - but it was considered a "beautiful death" because they would become pale and slender with smooth skin from the lead poisoning. Regulations are a wonderful thing.
It wasn't just women who got screwed.Hatters were men and they were poisoned by mercury,chimney sweeps were mostly boys and they were exposed to absurd levels of PAHs etc...
I'm from Illinois, not too far from Ottawa where the Radium Watch Company was located. The radium girls story isn't quite over yet, the block where the factory was located, along with the warehouses were located are still contaminated. If you were to take a geiger counter into the city you could pinpoint each site by the radiation still present in the soil. As far as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, those girls were basically imprisoned in the factory with the elevator doors (the only way in or out of the 8th floor factory)along with the fire escape were chained and padlocked leaving them all to suffocate, incinerate or jump to their deaths. Thank GOD for the unions! Business would have continued to abuse workers or "the rank and file" without them
Annie Besant! She is one of the co-founders of INC & contributed to the freedom struggle of India 🇮🇳. She died in India, and there is a place named after her in chennai (Besant Nagar) which is where I live.
Very well written episode, i love how you did not explain the matter chronologically, but in ways that everything that you need to know is provided in order. ...also a nice mix of chemistry, medicine and history.
Love how this channel isn’t trying to spread false information or cause panic when discussing issues such as the Corona Virus and is just genuinely informative and funny
There was also a trend of doctors ignoring women’s health or brushing them off. I’m glad that *definitely* doesn’t happen anymore, especially when it comes to menstrual/cycle issues...oh wait...
@@jackkraken3888 : I remember thalidomide babies with "flippers" where arms and legs should be among other not so obvious birth defects, all because of an anti nausea drug taken by the mothers while pregnant. Later there was another drug called DES or diethylsylbesterol that caused problems with especially female fetuses.
1:08 Dutch matches (Lucifers(!)) are spectacular at that. Other tricks include: flaring up then dying out before igniting the wooden stick, and just snapping when you strike them.
"Lucifer" is one of the original names for what we now call matches. It's interesting that they are still called that in The Netherlands. (Although Friese is very close to Old English, so maybe not all that surprising)
And this is why we have regulation. Time and time again, history shows that businesses on the whole will go as far as they're allowed if left unchecked.
And one of the reasons conditions were allowed to be that bad (other than being in the 1800s) was that many companies like this were monopolies and had deals with the government to limit competition. A lot of regulation helps big business by making it economically impossible for people to start new businesses by the cost of the regulation.
And now the government wants to give hundreds of billions again to corporations instead of people "for the economy" when they are really throwing millions into poverty while the businesses will just pocket the money.
@@Xanthelei GameStop probably wasn't putting anyone in danger. I can't think of the last time I've wanted to approach within six feet of anyone there (customer or staff) unless I walked in with them. (This is snark, unrustle your jimmies.)
Kinda makes me glad that I'm not a factory worker in that time period. I mean worker protections and unions aren't a whole lot better nowadays, but at least people aren't dying by the thousands. But it's still ok to keep workers in poverty and give them no rights.
Harvest Regulation still has a long way to go.OSHA generally goes overboard these days about some things( some of their fall protection policy is absurd), and not far enough regulation on other things ( construction/manufacturing air quality is the worst, and hardly ever monitored).
The only way a business will self regulate is if it is small enough to be less with someone with a conscience, or more realistically if there is a financial incentive to do so. Of it makes for a good marketing image, yields a tax benefit or profit.
This is a horrifying story but thanks for the knowledge shared. US history doesn’t talk about this. I’m glad these things get shared on such a public platform
@@5Genjoyer They do tend to skip some yes, but they skip a lot in a lot of areas of history, and they kind of have to. There's not enough time in 12 years of school to go through our history at this level for more than a few really big things, usually related to us becoming a country. But they do, or did at least, talk a bit about the horrible living and working conditions, including child labor, in the factories during the industrial revolution.
@Matthew Morycinski Have you ever read _The Three Body Problem?_ The early chapters are all about the targeting and murder of a professor that teaches relativity, something that _actually happened_ during the Cultural Revolution. That is why you don't just smile and carry on saying what you want -- even if it's demonstrably true, you could get killed for it because someone more powerful than you doesn't want to hear it.
@@lordgarion514 I feel like there's two big problems with how we teach it though. 1. We teach about everything in the past tense, as though all of the issues with capitalism are over and done and will never come back and have been thoroughly dealt with. This just isn't the case as I'm sure many news stories surrounding covid-19 (as a starting point, though not the end or only point) have shown you. 2. We do not teach about the actual methods people used to get corporations to stop ignoring the problems they were causing. Unions, protests, strikes, and other forms of ground level action were at least as important as most legal action and yet it frequently barely gets a passing mention if that. Often, the laws themselves wouldn't exist without people on the ground pushing the companies to stop treating people as literally worth less than the products they are shipping out. Direct action is one of the most important tools people have.
@@zaffytaffy9504 honestly? ok, the *dark* history of something that is used to *light* up stuff i guess you would call that irony, especially considering "dark" is only synonymous to bad because of its negative connotation... true to its form dark just describes the absence of light sorry i digressed a bit :D
"Factories in the mid-19th century weren't exactly known for their concern about factory workers." And modern factories are? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont_(1802-2017)
Валерия He didn’t say anything about modern factories either way. 19th century factories ARE infamous for how bad they were. And while it varies, on the whole, modern factories in developed nations are a lot better.
Ikr? Of _course_ they didn't sign the treaty banning the lethal matches, even though a safer alternative existed for decades. Freedom ... for business to literally poison workers to death.
Almost like the capitalist factory owners don't care about their workers, especially young women.... (And certainly there are no parallels today with cashew farming, garment industry, or rare earth metal mining...)
what do you mean, companies can self regulate and they always make sure their employees are most protected. Don't believe me? Just ask any company and they'll tell you exactly what I told you. Still don't believe me? then it must be that you're a socialist-communist-marxist-devil who hates America, the founding fathers, the flag and you're probably a Russian or Chinese spy anyway, so we have nothing to talk about.
A lot of hair splitting can be done here, but it is interesting to compare modern matches and lighters with the burning of fats and oils, the striking of flint, or the rubbing of sticks.
Whenever you say, "That rule seems silly. Who would do that? It is obviously dangerous." Always remember, Those rules were written in blood. People, a lot of people, have to die to keep greed from running unchecked.
I just looked it up, and though there are less invasive treatments if the infection is mild (like antibiotics), for bad cases of bis-phossy jaw, surgical removal is still the treatment.
3:25 Annie Besant was 1 of the few British who had sympathy for India . She always supported freedom of India and Ireland. Such a great lady ,my fellow countrymen you shouldn't forget her struggle for us ....
@@elhombredeoro955 her dad was English her mum was Irish and she was born in England so that made her British. Where do you stand with Arthur Guinness he created the Icon of Ireland and was very proud of being a British Protestant as well as a proud Irishman.
4:38 "When you strike the match on the box, the friction with the powdered glass generates enough heat to turn a tiny amount of the red phosphorus into white phosphorus." -- I take it that this "minuscule" amount is not enough to be a health hazard? Or it ignites before anyone can breathe it in?
I was once in great risk of developing this condition ... until at a dental check-up I discovered I had mis-heard my dentist's instructions on my previous visit. From then on, I ceased to "phoss" my teeth daily.
I have no idea how people can still think markets can be left to their own devices. These people are either ignorant of history or they are willfully ignorant of history.
The US does an excellent job in propaganda by either not teaching their own labor history or disregarding it as a fluke in the system by "greedy" business owners and not just how the system they made works in the first place considering amazon and nestle and several other companies nowdays participate in similarly unethical behavior but trying to fix that is spooky socialism by US people.
This still happens, but due to bisphosphonate medication (mostly wen given IV, rather than orally). It’s prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis, as it stops the bone regenerating so quickly, thus the good cells aren’t replaced by bad cells. It’s now actually called BRONJ or even MRONJ - bisphosphonate/medication related osteonecrosis of the jaw. Now they give a mixture of a special mouthwash and prophylactic antibiotics in a sterile hospital setting, to help reduce the risk of B/MRONJ, if dental extractions are needed.
@@infinitecanadian It's not the *condition* that people are making light of.. it's just the silly sounding *name* that science and medicine gave it. "Phossy jaw" just sounds like something an overworked prostitute would develop after a long weekend in Las Vegas.
Dear Hank Green, Thank you for doing your research on the topic of the dark history of matches and how matches were made back 150 years ago. I would also like to thank you for showing your sources that were used research your topic. As we are in an era where the line between fact and fiction seem to be blurred. With your video showing your sources in the description it gives me hope for a bright future where the days of fake news and propaganda are thing of the past. I do have a suggestion for organization of your sources, I recommend annotating all of your sources. Other than that the topic is well researched and keep up the good work. I seriously didn’t know that the factories that used to make matches used different type of pure Phosphorus (White Phosphorus). I was also shocked to hear that White Phosphorus is still being used as a treatment for cancer. Thank you for reading my comment of appreciation of your video and I anticipate your response. Sincerely, Connor Compton
To be fair, factories STILL aren't concerned about their factory workers. They only started sort of, kind of pretending to care when the legislation said they had to care. And even today, they'll fight tooth and nail against the regulations that keep their employees safe because it costs them money to keep their employees alive. Corporations don't like that, even if it means costing human life, like what we see happening at Frito-Lay and Amazon literally right now. Nothing ever changes.
More of Annie Besant, "For a pamphlet on birth control, she along with Bradlaugh were found guilty of publishing an “obscene libel” and sentenced to six months in prison. In court they argued that “we think it more moral to prevent conception of children than, after they are born, to murder them by want of food, air and clothing.” At the Court of Appeal the sentence was quashed." we're still fighting that fight. evil doesn't let up.
It is possible to light a safety match on a pane of glass. Put your finger over the head of the match and push it fairly hard against the glass pane. Sweep you arm down quickly over the glass for a distance of about two feet. This fails more often than it works and can easily scrape off the match head requiring a new match. It also leaves a mark on the glass and can leave a burn on your finger if you do not remove it quickly. I have done this a number of times to confirm it works.
I love that international conventions outlawed white phosphorus in matches in the 1800s yet people thought everyone would be cool with using it as a chemical weapon.
The difference is that in *incendiary* weapons, the white phosphorous is set on fire, and the exposure troops have to it is quite limited compared to what match workers endured. Nobody is using white phosphorous to try to poison enemy troops or combatants, because it would take too long and be ineffective in most cases. That being said, I suspect the most common use for white phosphorous in military applications is flares.
She was not British 😠😠😠 She was Irish. Calling an Irish person, a British is like calling an Indian Pakistani or calling a Korean person Japanese. It should be a crime!!!
Fun Fact: Sometime during i think in the 1800s William booth (also the founder of the Salvos) opened his own redhead match factory and increased the pay to something like 2.5x higher than the pay at the whitehead factories, so the workers just left the whitehead factories and worked at Booth's instead, which is one way the Salvos got a kickstart in money. (I'm not fully sure about the facts but it is something like that)
I believe I have seen every video you guys have done. I'm a big fan and I am looking for inspiration. I am working on developing a multi-purpose geothermal energy plant and would love to hear your take on geothermal technologies.
I think the world realized the extent of phossy jaw, they just didn’t care. They were poor, and they were poor women. Not a good combination if you wanted to stay alive at that time.
JanineBean poor people. Poor people suffered horrifyingly during that period. Both sexes. Not taking away from the awful suffering here at all, but just a reminder.
@@eccremocarpusscaber5159 that period and any other, things improve but still those who have no political power get neglected and with that comes the horror stuff. The US is still full of examples, the thing is that societies are really good at not paying attention to what they don't want to face or accept.
I've literally never heard the term (bis)phossy jaw. I learned it as osteonecrosis of the jaw, or ONJ. Fun fact about bisphosphonates though, their half life in bone (a measure of how long it sticks around) is on the order of YEARS, so patients treated with bisphosphonates like alendronate usually have a drug holiday (i.e. stop taking the med) after 3-6 years.
3:40, now the owner of factory could move his factory to some countries in Asia or just subcontract the job to contractors there. Then, U.K. workers don't necessarily complain about working conditions or occupational disease because that job no longer exists. And for workers in Asian countries, particularly in country where Stalin ideology was applied, no media dares to report without authority's approval. So the problem resolved!
Thanks for the history lesson, could you do one on the strike anywhere matches like the ohio blue tip. We used to strike them against our blue jeans and thumb nail and they'd lite.
Interesting. When I was in the Army a long time ago, we used to eat the heads of matches that came in the rations. This was supposed to keep chiggers away. I don’t know of any science on it, but it seemed to work at least anecdotally.
White Phosphorus is so reactive because it is a molecule of 4 Phosphorus atoms arranged in a pyramid shape, which is an unstable shape for it to exist in. Red Phosphorus is also in a pyramid shape, but each 4-atom pyramid is attached to another one just like it, giving it stability. White Phosphorus can ignite in air by itself, while the red form is stable in air.
This is how big businesses are. They care more about their bottom line than they do their workers. The only reason they aren't like they once were, is because of laws that won't let them be. If they could still get away with sacrificing the safety of their workers in order to make their business more profitable and more efficient, they would. This isn't true of all businesses, but to the majority of them, you are just a cog on the machine, and can be easily replaced.
This is why I will never understand the people that "don't trust the government at all", but trust corporations.... It's literally better to trust your gvt than a corporation, if that's your only choice. At least the gvt sees you as a person, a corporation ALWAYS sees it's employees as just replaceable assets. They also see their customers as just money. If you don't have money, you don't exist for the corporations.
And that's even leaving out the even older type of matches that in order to light them required dipping them into a small asbestos bottle filled with Sulphuric acid. And that process never, ever went wrong.
Ah yes, Sulfuric acid and asbestos. The cuddly teddy bears of chemicals. lol :D But more seriously, yikes. I'm glad that's not how matches work now.
@hawkturkey It would be better described as an asbestos lined bottle, the lining was saturated with the acid and you rubbed the match on the lining.
@hawkturkey Asbestos was used to make fireproof pots for centuries, it was one of earliest uses of it so there must be some process of sealing it or weaving the fibres tightly enough to hold liquid.
@hawkturkey let's mix the two and find out.
@@orchidcolors Asbestos is a silicate mineral used for its thermal qualities. It isn't a "chemical" at all. Jus sayn.
The similarities to the radium girls is insane
Women as the victims and slow to care about them.
Any kind of 19-th century production line dominated by women really... scratch that: Any kind of 19-th century production line *PERIOD*
and that one woman who got mesothelioma from asbestos
Not surprising, no osha in those days
@@Zestrayswede Like the kids who lost their fingers in the massive fabric factories
It's never good when your company asks you to write your loved ones about the lovely time you are having.
In Dracula (the novel), there's a scene where Jonathan Harker is forced to write home about how everything is fine and he's already well on his way home. That's when he knows he's about to be killed.
Yep, not a giant red flag at all.
**glances at those Amazon "ambassadors" on Twitter**
@@WouldntULikeToKnow.: Giant red flag... sounds like some of the little-known horrors of the Soviet Union (particularly the Stalin era). If you want an horror story, I would suggest the video _Nazinsky_ from the *Geographics* channel. Going back onto the subject of chemical weapons, even the Great Britain had been testing nerve agents on their own citizens, despite the highly illegal nature of the tests conducted at _Porton Down._
Is like a crappy version of North Korea
So one person is fired, and everyone else walks out. Wow. :O That is really cool!
Don't say Socialist too loud - a lot of people will lose their minds.
Their solidarity was unmatched.
@@lyndsaybrown8471 Oh, that's good - well played.
That's because they had socialist media back then. When the CIA was founded they took over all the union media and union leadership, so you don't have real labor activism anymore in this country - or independent media (for that matter).
Unionize!
In Portuguese, we use the same word for "phosphorus" and "match" ("fósforo").
Pedro Figueira
Same in Spanish:
Fósforo
Nice to know! Posporo in tagalog (PH).
And in french we call them allumettes because...
@@tomf3150 Elles allument! Hahaha
@@tomf3150 Little lights - Cos Lum is light in Latin or something. XO J'aime le trivia :)
This finally answers a question I had forgotten but was always in the back of my mind since I was a kid. I remember those old cartoons and cowboy movies where they'd light their match on their boot or the scruff of their beard etc., and I always thought that was strange because whenever I tried to imitate it, it obviously didn't work. I figured they wouldn't do that if it wasn't possible, but I thought that maybe there was just a trick to it that I didn't know. Now, thanks to this video, I know that it _is_ impossible with modern matches, but was very possible with matches from the time periods depicted in those old cartoons and movies. Thank you! I didn't know how much that was bothering me until now.
I agree
@TheBrodsterBoy And some with blue and green tips, for whatever reason. IDT there's Green Phosphorus or Blue Phosphorus, but...
BTW, those are Storm Matches, generally.
Strike anywhere matches are still available, just less common.
As an add-on to those "old cartoons", did you know that Bugs Bunny's trope of munching on carrots is a reference to an old movie? In "It Happened One Night", Clark Gable eats a whole carrot in a scene. The reference stuck, and because of that, generations of kids have though erroneously that rabbits should eat carrots.
@@catatonicbug7522 bugs bunny is also the reason "Nimrod" is now used as a synonym for idiot. Nimrod was a famous hunter in Greek mythology and Bugs bunny sarcastically called Elmer Fuff this when he failed. Most of the audience didn't understand the reference and thought it was a synonym for moron
Stories like this make you appreciate that you're alive today, even with all of the problems of the modern world.
Right? I used to have a typical time machine fantasy about visiting the mid to late 1800s, but even with the benefit of all I know now, I feel like my fragile white ass would wind up in a pauper's grave
@@irighterotica Behold! a simple machine I created that will allo-
BURN THE WIZARD!
I was on a very similar thought thinking that my grandparents grandparents made it thru all of everything that killed other people to make my life possible its kind of the bigger thought ur the product of a very very very long win in reproduction all the things that your fore generation made it thru to u NUTS ABSOLUTELY MIND blowing
You mean the pandemic?
Uh, you know a lot of things you can buy are still being manufactured in countries without adequate regulations that protect them from severe health issues? Chances are pretty good you have something that risked someone's life to make.
So reminiscent of the "Radium Girls" (who painted clock dials with radium and dipped the the brushes in their mouths).
Women having jobs (just remembered the Triangle Shirt Factory) was basically a death sentence in the old days.
Eat lead
Or the porcelain girls of the 1900's - who would be poisoned from the lead in the glazes used to paint porcelain - but it was considered a "beautiful death" because they would become pale and slender with smooth skin from the lead poisoning. Regulations are a wonderful thing.
It wasn't just women who got screwed.Hatters were men and they were poisoned by mercury,chimney sweeps were mostly boys and they were exposed to absurd levels of PAHs etc...
I'm from Illinois, not too far from Ottawa where the Radium Watch Company was located. The radium girls story isn't quite over yet, the block where the factory was located, along with the warehouses were located are still contaminated. If you were to take a geiger counter into the city you could pinpoint each site by the radiation still present in the soil.
As far as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, those girls were basically imprisoned in the factory with the elevator doors (the only way in or out of the 8th floor factory)along with the fire escape were chained and padlocked leaving them all to suffocate, incinerate or jump to their deaths.
Thank GOD for the unions! Business would have continued to abuse workers or "the rank and file" without them
Remember this when politicians, promise to get rid of those pesky regulations that are "killing profits".
Phossy-Jaw. Gotta love that old school wistfulness. Also the 1800's name for stepping on a landmine was "bomby foot"
Wait till you hear about shooty-brain...
Annie Besant! She is one of the co-founders of INC & contributed to the freedom struggle of India 🇮🇳. She died in India, and there is a place named after her in chennai (Besant Nagar) which is where I live.
Very well written episode, i love how you did not explain the matter chronologically, but in ways that everything that you need to know is provided in order.
...also a nice mix of chemistry, medicine and history.
"The US was not among the signatories..."
a tradition that continues to this day.
Love how this channel isn’t trying to spread false information or cause panic when discussing issues such as the Corona Virus and is just genuinely informative and funny
There seems to be a trend of businesses ignoring workers health. I'm glad that can't happen today. Oh wait...
There was also a trend of doctors ignoring women’s health or brushing them off. I’m glad that *definitely* doesn’t happen anymore, especially when it comes to menstrual/cycle issues...oh wait...
@@chickenalpaca0332 oh God I recently remember we watching a documentary about the thalidomide babies, it was really eye opening.
@@jackkraken3888 : I remember thalidomide babies with "flippers" where arms and legs should be among other not so obvious birth defects, all because of an anti nausea drug taken by the mothers while pregnant. Later there was another drug called DES or diethylsylbesterol that caused problems with especially female fetuses.
1:08 Dutch matches (Lucifers(!)) are spectacular at that.
Other tricks include: flaring up then dying out before igniting the wooden stick,
and just snapping when you strike them.
"Lucifer" is one of the original names for what we now call matches. It's interesting that they are still called that in The Netherlands. (Although Friese is very close to Old English, so maybe not all that surprising)
South African "Lion" matches are also really good at flinging fireballs and just not working in general.
And this is why we have regulation. Time and time again, history shows that businesses on the whole will go as far as they're allowed if left unchecked.
And one of the reasons conditions were allowed to be that bad (other than being in the 1800s) was that many companies like this were monopolies and had deals with the government to limit competition.
A lot of regulation helps big business by making it economically impossible for people to start new businesses by the cost of the regulation.
And now the government wants to give hundreds of billions again to corporations instead of people "for the economy" when they are really throwing millions into poverty while the businesses will just pocket the money.
... and people still need to pay bills. That's why shady companies run the way they do.
Game Stop just proved that this last week. So it isn't even like we have to look to the early 1900s for good examples.
@@Xanthelei GameStop probably wasn't putting anyone in danger. I can't think of the last time I've wanted to approach within six feet of anyone there (customer or staff) unless I walked in with them. (This is snark, unrustle your jimmies.)
Radium Girls and Matchstick Girls, thank you for your contributions to science. I'm sorry for what you suffered through; you deserved better.
"Everything was flammable back then..." --SciShow
Gods, I was flammable then!
Mateo Gg still are if you try hard enough
lol I read your comment right when he said that.
Better eat your dinner before it burns to ash,
Yeah and the matchstick girl strike 😁
I will be bookmarking this for the next time someone suggests that businesses can self regulate.
They're gonna say that it was another time and business men didn't know better 😧
Kinda makes me glad that I'm not a factory worker in that time period.
I mean worker protections and unions aren't a whole lot better nowadays, but at least people aren't dying by the thousands. But it's still ok to keep workers in poverty and give them no rights.
Harvest Regulation still has a long way to go.OSHA generally goes overboard these days about some things( some of their fall protection policy is absurd), and not far enough regulation on other things ( construction/manufacturing air quality is the worst, and hardly ever monitored).
The only way a business will self regulate is if it is small enough to be less with someone with a conscience, or more realistically if there is a financial incentive to do so. Of it makes for a good marketing image, yields a tax benefit or profit.
Business can self regulate that fact poor people die is just part of business for them. Sarcasm of course
I am a labor organizer in the IWW and I just wanted to say I LOVE this episode. Thank yall so much for making it
This is a horrifying story but thanks for the knowledge shared. US history doesn’t talk about this. I’m glad these things get shared on such a public platform
Us history classes tend to shy away from any bit of history that casts unfettered capitalism in a negative light.
@@5Genjoyer
They do tend to skip some yes, but they skip a lot in a lot of areas of history, and they kind of have to. There's not enough time in 12 years of school to go through our history at this level for more than a few really big things, usually related to us becoming a country.
But they do, or did at least, talk a bit about the horrible living and working conditions, including child labor, in the factories during the industrial revolution.
@Matthew Morycinski Have you ever read _The Three Body Problem?_ The early chapters are all about the targeting and murder of a professor that teaches relativity, something that _actually happened_ during the Cultural Revolution. That is why you don't just smile and carry on saying what you want -- even if it's demonstrably true, you could get killed for it because someone more powerful than you doesn't want to hear it.
H Grace, no, we do talk about this at school. We had a 2 week unit about life in the industrial revolution and this was frequently talked about
@@lordgarion514 I feel like there's two big problems with how we teach it though.
1. We teach about everything in the past tense, as though all of the issues with capitalism are over and done and will never come back and have been thoroughly dealt with. This just isn't the case as I'm sure many news stories surrounding covid-19 (as a starting point, though not the end or only point) have shown you.
2. We do not teach about the actual methods people used to get corporations to stop ignoring the problems they were causing. Unions, protests, strikes, and other forms of ground level action were at least as important as most legal action and yet it frequently barely gets a passing mention if that. Often, the laws themselves wouldn't exist without people on the ground pushing the companies to stop treating people as literally worth less than the products they are shipping out. Direct action is one of the most important tools people have.
dark history of matches
i see what you did there
wait what I don't know what you mean??
@@zaffytaffy9504 honestly?
ok, the *dark* history of something that is used to *light* up stuff
i guess you would call that irony, especially considering "dark" is only synonymous to bad because of its negative connotation... true to its form dark just describes the absence of light
sorry i digressed a bit :D
@@zaffytaffy9504
please tell me you are joking
Striking
@@zaffytaffy9504 IKR? It's not a play on words or any pun worthy title. So I see what YOU did there.
I love, love, love science and history combined. Thank you for this video
I get way too excited when I check the description and see its Hank
I have zero issue listening to him since I have been since 2006
"Factories in the mid-19th century weren't exactly known for their concern about factory workers."
And modern factories are? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont_(1802-2017)
Валерия almost like corporations don’t regulate themselves and instead oversight is required. Nice to see more examples.
Валерия He didn’t say anything about modern factories either way. 19th century factories ARE infamous for how bad they were. And while it varies, on the whole, modern factories in developed nations are a lot better.
@@tookitogo better? yes. Good? no.
Clockwork King which is why I used the word “better” and not “good”... 🙄
Whats wrong with dupont?
"But factories in the mid nineteenth century weren't known for their concern about factory workers."
Lol, as if that's changed.
Again the US be like: FREEDOM IS FAILING TO ADDRESS YOUR HEALTH AND WELLNESS CONCERNS!
Ikr? Of _course_ they didn't sign the treaty banning the lethal matches, even though a safer alternative existed for decades. Freedom ... for business to literally poison workers to death.
@@flyingcapsicum and this is why it's important to know what people actually mean when they use the word freedom.
And yet most of the u.s. would say the socialist who helped save all those people was the villian
@[REDACTED] no it hasn't
Caring about the well being of workers is now called socialism I guess
I appreciate that you guys cite your sources. Pretty rad, honestly.
This kind of reminds me of the Radium girls.
Uncle Squishy my first thought exactly
It's surely a coincidence, the suggested video card in the top right had nothing to do with it.
@@6alecapristrudel I didn't have that suggestion. I actually had to go hunt the video down because I almost called them the Radon girls.
Almost like the capitalist factory owners don't care about their workers, especially young women.... (And certainly there are no parallels today with cashew farming, garment industry, or rare earth metal mining...)
This is why unions are so important.
what do you mean, companies can self regulate and they always make sure their employees are most protected. Don't believe me? Just ask any company and they'll tell you exactly what I told you. Still don't believe me? then it must be that you're a socialist-communist-marxist-devil who hates America, the founding fathers, the flag and you're probably a Russian or Chinese spy anyway, so we have nothing to talk about.
@@HighDeafRadio lol You've probably never had a job.
Unions are mostly corrupt and don't care about their members.
@@slappy8941 True. That's what's happening in South Africa
@@slappy8941 Yes, there are bad unions. That doesn't necessarily mean that unions are bad.
Wow.. I love this channel
Fun fact: The lighter was invented before the match
😝
A lot of hair splitting can be done here, but it is interesting to compare modern matches and lighters with the burning of fats and oils, the striking of flint, or the rubbing of sticks.
@@Christopher-N that is an amazingly clever response, you have too much genius for us lowly comment section dwellers
@@user-zd9fc4vs4q he had me at rubbing of sticks
Whenever you say, "That rule seems silly. Who would do that? It is obviously dangerous." Always remember, Those rules were written in blood. People, a lot of people, have to die to keep greed from running unchecked.
>They decided to start using white phosphorus
I got Spec-Ops: The Line flashbacks
Ya me too 😄
Same man...
Press F to pay respects to your hallucinations.
@@anarchyantz1564 except the phosphorus wasnt part of the hallucination
@@anarchyantz1564 F
Good old strike really puts things in perspective, right on!
Reminds me of the little match girl by Hans Christian Anderson..
Thank you for the history lesson and the way you bring light to things of the past, more specifically, issues of the past so we may learn from them.
Matches are neat and I do like the simple tech. That was interesting to learn. I like learning.
Wow, I hadn't thought about this in years! I had read about it, many years ago, but it's not in common knowledge, so I'm glad you made this video!
Striking matches and match strikes. What a match!
Hank will always have that special place as host
"You have phossy jaw, we need to remove your bones." Ah yes, the olden days.
I just looked it up, and though there are less invasive treatments if the infection is mild (like antibiotics), for bad cases of bis-phossy jaw, surgical removal is still the treatment.
Thank you for not showing graphic photos or giving graphic descriptions of symptoms! My traumatized ass is grateful.
Same.
3:25 Annie Besant was 1 of the few British who had sympathy for India . She always supported freedom of India and Ireland. Such a great lady ,my fellow countrymen you shouldn't forget her struggle for us ....
She was Irish, not British. Calling an Irish person a British should be a hate crime!!!
@@elhombredeoro955 her dad was English her mum was Irish and she was born in England so that made her British.
Where do you stand with Arthur Guinness he created the Icon of Ireland and was very proud of being a British Protestant as well as a proud Irishman.
4:38 "When you strike the match on the box, the friction with the powdered glass generates enough heat to turn a tiny amount of the red phosphorus into white phosphorus." -- I take it that this "minuscule" amount is not enough to be a health hazard? Or it ignites before anyone can breathe it in?
It burns off before it can get anywhere. It's the small sparks that are let off and it reacts with the match itself to start combustion.
I was once in great risk of developing this condition ... until at a dental check-up I discovered I had mis-heard my dentist's instructions on my previous visit. From then on, I ceased to "phoss" my teeth daily.
Cool story bro
@@KevAlberta ;-)
Never trust the company to look out for the workers.
I have no idea how people can still think markets can be left to their own devices. These people are either ignorant of history or they are willfully ignorant of history.
The US does an excellent job in propaganda by either not teaching their own labor history or disregarding it as a fluke in the system by "greedy" business owners and not just how the system they made works in the first place considering amazon and nestle and several other companies nowdays participate in similarly unethical behavior but trying to fix that is spooky socialism by US people.
This still happens, but due to bisphosphonate medication (mostly wen given IV, rather than orally). It’s prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis, as it stops the bone regenerating so quickly, thus the good cells aren’t replaced by bad cells. It’s now actually called BRONJ or even MRONJ - bisphosphonate/medication related osteonecrosis of the jaw. Now they give a mixture of a special mouthwash and prophylactic antibiotics in a sterile hospital setting, to help reduce the risk of B/MRONJ, if dental extractions are needed.
I won't listen to any scishow without this guy
Great episode !
The only thing worse than "phossy jaw" is getting "jazz hands".
Or the dreaded "smart ass". I seem to catch that one every season.
@@phoule76 I have the exact same condition unfortunately mines chronic. LMAO 😂😂
This isn't particularly funny. Many suffered from phossy jaw.
@@infinitecanadian It's not the *condition* that people are making light of.. it's just the silly sounding *name* that science and medicine gave it. "Phossy jaw" just sounds like something an overworked prostitute would develop after a long weekend in Las Vegas.
@@treborironwolfe978 It still isn't funny.
3:12 Try centuries, Hank. Look around, they still don't care.
Among all the scishow hosts, he is the best
Dear Hank Green,
Thank you for doing your research on the topic of the dark history of matches and how matches were made back 150 years ago. I would also like to thank you for showing your sources that were used research your topic. As we are in an era where the line between fact and fiction seem to be blurred. With your video showing your sources in the description it gives me hope for a bright future where the days of fake news and propaganda are thing of the past.
I do have a suggestion for organization of your sources, I recommend annotating all of your sources. Other than that the topic is well researched and keep up the good work.
I seriously didn’t know that the factories that used to make matches used different type of pure Phosphorus (White Phosphorus). I was also shocked to hear that White Phosphorus is still being used as a treatment for cancer.
Thank you for reading my comment of appreciation of your video and I anticipate your response.
Sincerely,
Connor Compton
Excellent educational video!
Around 50% science and 50% history. But. 100% intresting. awesome!
Just curious: are the white phosphorus matchstick troubles a inspiration for The Little Matchgirl story?
To be fair, factories STILL aren't concerned about their factory workers. They only started sort of, kind of pretending to care when the legislation said they had to care. And even today, they'll fight tooth and nail against the regulations that keep their employees safe because it costs them money to keep their employees alive. Corporations don't like that, even if it means costing human life, like what we see happening at Frito-Lay and Amazon literally right now.
Nothing ever changes.
More of Annie Besant, "For a pamphlet on birth control, she along with Bradlaugh were found guilty of publishing an “obscene libel” and sentenced to six months in prison. In court they argued that “we think it more moral to prevent conception of children than, after they are born, to murder them by want of food, air and clothing.” At the Court of Appeal the sentence was quashed." we're still fighting that fight. evil doesn't let up.
It is possible to light a safety match on a pane of glass. Put your finger over the head of the match and push it fairly hard against the glass pane. Sweep you arm down quickly over the glass for a distance of about two feet. This fails more often than it works and can easily scrape off the match head requiring a new match. It also leaves a mark on the glass and can leave a burn on your finger if you do not remove it quickly. I have done this a number of times to confirm it works.
Hank I came for the fire but you surprised me with glass 4:33 .. I'm on-top of anything Fire or Glass related! Some of my glass work--> ⌛️ ⚗️ 🔎 ⛓ 🕯
Great video!
Great video. I am a community pharmacist and one of my patients had her life destroyed by a denosumab injection.
science history is really fascinating
I love that international conventions outlawed white phosphorus in matches in the 1800s yet people thought everyone would be cool with using it as a chemical weapon.
It's a helluvalotta fun.
The difference is that in *incendiary* weapons, the white phosphorous is set on fire, and the exposure troops have to it is quite limited compared to what match workers endured. Nobody is using white phosphorous to try to poison enemy troops or combatants, because it would take too long and be ineffective in most cases. That being said, I suspect the most common use for white phosphorous in military applications is flares.
‘WilliePete’.
Annie Besant was a great woman! She was also one of the rare British people at the time who sympathized with the Indian independence struggle.
She was not British 😠😠😠
She was Irish. Calling an Irish person, a British is like calling an Indian Pakistani or calling a Korean person Japanese. It should be a crime!!!
Fun Fact: Sometime during i think in the 1800s William booth (also the founder of the Salvos) opened his own redhead match factory and increased the pay to something like 2.5x higher than the pay at the whitehead factories, so the workers just left the whitehead factories and worked at Booth's instead, which is one way the Salvos got a kickstart in money. (I'm not fully sure about the facts but it is something like that)
in addition for use in treating metastatic bone lesions you should mention that the more common use of bisphosphonates is to treat osteoporosis.
I believe I have seen every video you guys have done. I'm a big fan and I am looking for inspiration. I am working on developing a multi-purpose geothermal energy plant and would love to hear your take on geothermal technologies.
And yet pretty much the exact same thing played out with the radium girls 50 years later. History will always repeat itself.
I think the world realized the extent of phossy jaw, they just didn’t care. They were poor, and they were poor women. Not a good combination if you wanted to stay alive at that time.
JanineBean poor people. Poor people suffered horrifyingly during that period. Both sexes. Not taking away from the awful suffering here at all, but just a reminder.
People* not just women idiot
@@eccremocarpusscaber5159 that period and any other, things improve but still those who have no political power get neglected and with that comes the horror stuff. The US is still full of examples, the thing is that societies are really good at not paying attention to what they don't want to face or accept.
match factories sound like the amazon fulfillment centers of victorian england.
Solidarity with the Matchstick Girls!
As a Jar Head, I stand witness to many horrors of Mr. Willie Pete. WP bursts will do things to flesh that no one should ever witness.
Please join your union yall
if there isn't one? Ever the more reason to start one!
Unions don't protect workers, but they do kill jobs.
Preach it!
Thanks hanks.
"Fozzy Jaw" should be the new Name for Chris Jericho's finisher ;)
I've literally never heard the term (bis)phossy jaw. I learned it as osteonecrosis of the jaw, or ONJ.
Fun fact about bisphosphonates though, their half life in bone (a measure of how long it sticks around) is on the order of YEARS, so patients treated with bisphosphonates like alendronate usually have a drug holiday (i.e. stop taking the med) after 3-6 years.
Thanks, I actually forgot about this until I saw this video.
you should make a video about the radium girls also!
OK that was so weird, when the slow-mo video of the match lighting was on, I started smelling a match. The human brain is so cool!
Knew we were in for a ride when I heard White Phosphorous
I genuinely do not care about the history of matches, but that witty title got me
Your legacy lives on, matchstick girls. Thank you for your service, though it was not your choice. /salutes
HELL YEAH ANNIE BESANT.
One of my history heroes 😊
Wikipedia says she was Irish and she died in India. We are everywhere!!!!
amazing!
Annie Besant is a very prominent name in Indian independence movement too.
Irish people are everywhere.
3:40, now the owner of factory could move his factory to some countries in Asia or just subcontract the job to contractors there. Then, U.K. workers don't necessarily complain about working conditions or occupational disease because that job no longer exists. And for workers in Asian countries, particularly in country where Stalin ideology was applied, no media dares to report without authority's approval. So the problem resolved!
It took 100+ years for this change to protect workers, no small wonder that they still need to enact changes to add further protections.
Thanks for the history lesson, could you do one on the strike anywhere matches like the ohio blue tip. We used to strike them against our blue jeans and thumb nail and they'd lite.
Interesting. When I was in the Army a long time ago, we used to eat the heads of matches that came in the rations. This was supposed to keep chiggers away. I don’t know of any science on it, but it seemed to work at least anecdotally.
White Phosphorus is so reactive because it is a molecule of 4 Phosphorus atoms arranged in a pyramid shape, which is an unstable shape for it to exist in. Red Phosphorus is also in a pyramid shape, but each 4-atom pyramid is attached to another one just like it, giving it stability. White Phosphorus can ignite in air by itself, while the red form is stable in air.
This is how big businesses are. They care more about their bottom line than they do their workers. The only reason they aren't like they once were, is because of laws that won't let them be. If they could still get away with sacrificing the safety of their workers in order to make their business more profitable and more efficient, they would. This isn't true of all businesses, but to the majority of them, you are just a cog on the machine, and can be easily replaced.
"Matchstick girls strike" They got all fired up! Tempers flared!
Lemme guess, the red phosphorus is just a leeeettle bit more expensive to work with... -___-
This is why I will never understand the people that "don't trust the government at all", but trust corporations....
It's literally better to trust your gvt than a corporation, if that's your only choice. At least the gvt sees you as a person, a corporation ALWAYS sees it's employees as just replaceable assets. They also see their customers as just money. If you don't have money, you don't exist for the corporations.
Topic for next video: which was the famous "lucky strike"?
I'm so used to Hank teaching me anatomy and physiology.... LOL... this was a nice change...
One of my great-grandmothers worked at one of such factories in the 1920's :/