10 Things You Didn't Know About Oil

From Neatorama:

We all complain about the high price of oil: businessmen worry about the rising cost of petroleum-based raw materials, and politicians fret about the geo-political situations in oil rich countries and the rest of us pay through the nose whenever we fill up at the pump (yes, it has come down a bit, but only after such a huge run-up). But what do we really know about oil? Do you know where petroleum came from? (hint: not dinosaurs). Or that during the early days of Standard Oil, gasoline was so useless that it was dumped in rivers? Did you know how much it actually costs the Saudis to produce a barrel of crude oil? (This explains why they're SO rich). Here are the 10 Facts You Didn't Know About Oil: 1. Petroleum = Rock Oil The word petroleum comes from the Greek word "petros" and the Latin word "oleum" meaning "rock" and "oil". Before "petroleum" was coined by German mineralogist Georg Bauer in 1556, people simply called it "rock oil." Indeed, the Chinese, who had drilled the world's first oil well in 347 AD (a 800 feet or 240 m deep pit using bits attached to bamboo poles), called it - and still calls it - shi you, which literally means rock oil.

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