A brick to save us from The Bomb
In the middle 1950s, when the Cold War was at its hottest and we were being drilled on how to survive when the Commies dropped The Bomb on us, an LSU scientist said he’d found just the thing to save us.
Rice hulls.
And there may have been something to it.
If you pull out your frayed copy of the Chemical Engineering News for August 1955, you can find Professor John Hough’s article, in which he says the hulls not only made a sturdy, lightweight brick, but that they also offered unique protection against an atomic blast.