Clair Patterson developed a Lead-dating technique which allowed him to calculate the first ever accurate age for the Earth to be 4.55 billion years.

During these studies he became aware of Lead Pollution emanating from Lead anti-knocking additives in gasoline, namely that we had a 1000 times more lead contamination in our bodies than our ancestors.

This lead to lead being banned in gasoline but not before an arduous battle with the Ethyl Corporation where amongst other things they offered a massive amount of money to Patterson’s University to get rid of him.

Bill Bryson in his marvelous book A Short History of Nearly Everything has helped publicize this remarkable unsung hero!

More here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Patterson

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I actually mean English spelling mistakes that you mustn’t make if you are a native English speaker, some of them are what I call “CV straight in the bin” mistakes.

• If your English should be “If you’re English” . This is the worst mistake to make, what’s more your spell checker usually won’t catch it. Although anyone can make this mistake if writing when not fully alert!
• Seperate wrong it’s Separate think “part”
• Desperate however requires the ‘e’
• Definitely doesn’t contain an ‘a’
• its (for showing possession; mistakenly written as it’s, the contraction for it is)
• Receive is correct (i before e except after c)
• Watch out for Their, There and They’re
• Weather or Whether but you will almost certainly never require Wether which is a castrated ram

Avoid the above as they imply that you did not complete formal education hence usually they cause your CV to be rejected immediately.

By the way for your amusement a sentence containing the exceptions to the i before e except after c rule.

Neither financier seized either weird species of leisure.

(BTW if you’re wondering why I target native speakers it’s because foreigners usually make completely different mistakes but not necessarily those above)

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