No matter what you call it, it's sodium chloride (NcCl). Its chemical make-up was determined in 1807 by Sir Humphrey Davy, a British scientist doomed to be remembered because of a silly rhyme:
"Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy
And shall live in odium
For having discovered sodium."
Before Morton's ad agency thought up the little umbrella girl and the slogan "When it rains, it pours," the very idea of tiny, perfectly white, uniformly-sized salt crystals was a revolution.
Prices range from $4 to $50 a pound. But they've got one, a rare Korean salt, that's $270 a pound - more than the price of silver!
Wars could be won or lost over salt.
"In the American Civil War, the Union had an on-going policy of depriving the Confederacy of salt," Kurlansky said, "and for all four years of the war intentionally sought out and tried to destroy any salt works in the South."
clipped from: www.cbsnews.com 