I Love to Laugh Mr. Wigg, is said to float because of an excess of "laughing gas", although it is clear that the term is not used in the chemical sense. So-called "laughing gas" (nitrous oxide) was one of the earliest effective anaesthetics developed in the Nineteenth century. it was popularised by dentists, for pain-free tooth extractions, as well as by showground novelty booths. Customers at the booth would be gassed and, as they were recovering from the drugged sleep they often felt euphoric and giggly. Hence the name. A famous 1931 British comedy sketch starring Cicely Courtneidge, called "Laughing Gas", was based on
Trivial name German for "wolf's foam", how the mineral was known to Saxon miners. The name "tungsten" means "heavy stone", a description of scheelite, another mineral in which tungsten is found. The German names for hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are "Wasserstoff" (water substance), "Sauerstoff" (acid substance), and "Stickstoff" (smothering substance). Russian names for hydrogen, oxygen and carbon are "vodorod", "kislorod" and "uglerod" (generating water, acid and coal respectively). The corresponding Chinese names are "qīngqì" (light gas), "yǎngqì" (nourishing gas), and "dànqì" (diluting gas). A scheme for translating chemical names into Chinese was developed by John Fryer and Xu Shou in 1871. Where