Alliance Chemical Resource Library

Chemical & Product GuidesSep 22, 202618 min read

The Army Made a Man Fly on Hydrogen Peroxide, Then Walked Away: The Bell Rocket Belt, the X-15 and the Machine That Trained Neil Armstrong

The Bell Rocket Belt was a one-man flying pack built by Bell Aerosystems for the U.S. Army, flown untethered for the first time by engineer Harold...

Chemical & Product GuidesSep 18, 202618 min read

What Fuel Launched Freedom 7? The Alcohol, Water and Hydrogen Peroxide Behind America’s First Astronaut

Freedom 7, the flight that made Alan Shepard the first American in space on May 5, 1961, was launched by a Mercury-Redstone rocket burning ethyl alcohol...

Chemical & Product GuidesSep 10, 202619 min read

What Is Denatured Alcohol? Why the Government Poisons Perfectly Good Ethanol on Purpose

Denatured alcohol is ethanol (C₂H₆O, CAS 64-17-5) to which a small amount of a toxic or foul-tasting additive has been blended, under a federally published recipe,...

Chemical & Product GuidesAug 31, 202618 min read

Elixir Sulfanilamide: The 1937 Poisoning That Created the FDA — and the Glycol Mix-Up That Still Kills

Elixir Sulfanilamide was a raspberry-flavored liquid antibiotic sold by the S.E. Massengill Company of Bristol, Tennessee, in September 1937. Its solvent was diethylene glycol (DEG, CAS...

Chemical & Product GuidesAug 20, 202615 min read

Potash: The Chemical Behind America’s First Patent — and What It Became

Potash is the family name for water-soluble potassium salts, originally potassium carbonate (K₂CO₃) leached from wood ash in iron pots — the origin of both the...

Water & EnvironmentalAug 19, 202613 min read

Ignaz Semmelweis: The Doctor Who Discovered Handwashing — and the Chlorine That Proved Him Right

Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) was the Hungarian obstetrician who introduced antiseptic handwashing in 1847 at the Vienna General Hospital, requiring doctors to scrub in chlorinated lime solution...

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