50 years ago, the local newspaper featured the following article, entitled: Asbestos, nature’s miracle!
If a house wife places a thin asbestos plate on the furnace to prevent her food from burning, she probably does not realise the fact, that this material once was extremely precious. In ancient times, asbestos was more expensive than gold and even considered to be a sacred material! The Greek and Roman emperors wrapped their precious treasures in asbestos sheets to protect them from nature’s most destructive force: fire. Emperor Charles the Great once invited his enemies for diner and threw the table cloth into the fire place afterwards. When he took it out a while later, it was not damaged. The enemy, who did not know a thing about asbestos, thought Charlemagne was a magician, got scared and blew off war.
Nowadays, things are very different. Magic does not scare away the enemy – terrorists, president Bush, poverty – anymore and men in white suits from specialised companies have to remove the ‘sacred material’ from buildings…