Osmium

Ye Olde Salutation Inn is a public house dating from around 1240 that lays claim – along with Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem and The Bell Inn – to being the oldest in Nottingham.

The current building was constructed as a tanner with living accommodation above in 1240 on the site of an old alehouse known as The Archangel Gabriel Salutes the Virgin Mary.

Tragedy struck the pub in 1820, when a large quantity of arsenic, intended to deal with the pub’s rat problem, got mixed in with the oatmeal. The entire household in the Salutation, including the landlord John Green, were poisoned. Despite this, everyone survived… except for the unfortunate Green.

Osmium comes from the Greek word ‘osme’, which means smell, scent or odour. It has a characteristic unpleasant odour.

Discovered in 1803, osmium is one of the densest elements in the world. It is a lustrous, bluish white, hard metal and can be brittle even at a high temperature.

Osmium has also played a key role in various aspects of lightbulb technology over the years. The German light bulb manufacturer Osram takes its name from the materials used for the filament – first osmium and later wolfram.