Before the widespread invention of the internal combustion engine oil refineries considered gasoline to be a completely useless and highly dangerous byproduct of producing kerosene for lamps.

A closer look

Before the widespread invention of the internal combustion engine oil refineries considered gasoline to be a completely useless and highly dangerous byproduct of producing kerosene for lamps. Because there was literally no commercial market for this volatile liquid early petroleum companies would just casually dump millions of gallons of raw gasoline directly into local rivers or burn it off into the atmosphere. It was essentially viewed as highly flammable industrial garbage until automakers realized it was the absolute perfect juice to power early cars. Now we pay absurd prices at the pump for the exact same fluid that Victorian oil barons literally flushed down the toilet because they thought it was worthless trash. The entire backbone of global modern transportation is built on nineteenth-century dumpster juice