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How Did John Priestley Account For Oxygen

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Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by John Priestley in England, and two years earlier than Carl W. Scheele in Sweden. One day, while Priestley was doing an experiment on mercury, totally unexpectedly the mercury released a gas that made a candle stick burn five times faster. Priestley said “But what surprised me more than I can well express was that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame. I was utterly at loss how to account for it.” After John Priestley found how oxygen reacted on combustion he created an experiment. In his Experiment he placed a mouse in a jar of oxygen, expecting it would die in 15 minutes but ended up living for more than an hour. Priestley noted that there was a new biological role for oxygen.
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