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Oxygen
Vital to life, a necessity to combustion, and the component of innumerable compounds, oxygen is by far one of the most important elements. Astoundingly, Oxygen makes up a fifth of our atmosphere, 49.5% of all compounds on Earth contain oxygen, makes up about 2/3 of our body, yet human kind has only know of it since 1977 (http://pearl1.lanl.gov/periodic/elements/8.html). Ironically, within a period of a couple of years, three different men had stumbled upon the vital element. Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swede, made the initial discovery. However, Joseph Priestly, the man generally attributed with the discovery on the basis of his works being published first, discovered it in 1774. Neither of them quite understood it though, and only a French man by the name of Antoine Lavoisier who would be the first to fully understand it and disprove the old “phlogiston” notion (Priestly Joseph 4). Nonetheless, Carl Wilhelm Scheele was still the first to discover oxygen, a discovery......

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