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Saturday 5 April 2014

Chlorine

Chlorine is a chemical element, which appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table. It is a toxic greenish-yellow gas at room temperature with a strong smell like bleach.

Chlorine is heavier than air, so it can fill up enclosed spaces.

It can be made into a liquid when cooled.

The world’s oceans contain 20 million billion tons of chlorine.

Chlorine was discovered in 1774 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele who thought it had oxygen in it.

Chlorine gas was first used by French chemist Claude Berthollet to bleach textiles in 1785.

Chlorine was named in 1810 by Humphry Davy from Ancient Greek: χλωρóς khlôros “pale green”. It was he who first proved it is an element.

During the Paris cholera outbreak of 1832, large quantities of chloride of lime were used to disinfect the capital.

In 1908 chlorine was used in the United States for the first time to sterilize city water. The US made all water chlorinated by 1918.

The use of poison gas in World War I escalated when chlorine gas was released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.

President Calvin Coolidge suffered from asthma and because he mistrusted physicians, he treated himself with breathed chlorine released into the air of a closed room in a vain attempt to ease his condition.

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