CLASSIC: Conquest via Bird Poop: One Island at a Time
Ridiculous History
00:00
The History of Guano
In the 1840s and even before, guano became a very, very powerful and precious commodity because it was a source of salt peter for gunpowder. U.S. imports were more than, or around, I guess is fair to say, 760,000 tons. And one of the big sources of this came from Peruvian seabirds; farmers claimed in the 1840s that using this fertilizer could increase a crop yield threefold.
Transcript
Play full episode
