Do you know how soap was invented?

Sometimes, you will accidentally do a particularly bad thing. Don’t be pessimistic. Maybe today’s failure will open a window for tomorrow’s success.

Today’s short story interprets this sentence to us.

In the 7th century BC, in a royal palace in ancient Egypt, a cook accidentally knocked over a pot of cooking oil on the ground.

He was very scared, so he quickly sprinkled the ashes from the stove when others didn’t find it, and then took the ashes soaked with grease and threw them out with his hands.

After throwing it away, he looked at his greasy hands and thought: Such dirty hands, I don’t know when to wash them! He hesitated and put his hand in the water.

A miracle happened: he just rubbed a few gently, and the greasy hand was easily washed away! Even the original old dirt has been washed away!

The chef thought it was weird and asked other chefs to try this ash oil. As a result, everyone’s hands were washed cleaner than before.

Later, the Pharaoh also knew the secret and asked the chef to make some oily plant ash for him to wash his hands. This is the earliest soap.

Later people knew

Alkali in plant ash

Edible oil contains fat

Fat and alkali are mixed,

The resulting compound is soap.

Although soap has come out very early, and everyone knows its benefits. But soap has long existed as a luxury item, so the ancients and common people mainly used a wooden stick instead of a piece of soap to wash clothes by the river.

When the soap was born, in addition to being expensive, there was also the question of whether you could afford it.

In the Tsarist era, only people in the palace and nobles could use it. Serfs were strictly prohibited from using soap. They could only use alkaline water (clean water after boiling firewood ash in water). If they violated it, they would be punished.

It was not until the 19th century that soap became popular worldwide.

Later, the Roman scholar Pliny improved and used lanolin and plant ash to make bar soap for the first time.

Later, Queen Elizabeth, I of England ordered a soap factory to be built in Bristol, where the boiled suet was mixed with caustic soda and chalk to make soap.

As a result, the quality of soap has been greatly improved than before, but the price is still very expensive, and ordinary people cannot afford it.

Until today, soap has become a common item in the lives of ordinary people. This is the story of the invention of soap.