[gary]

Originally Posted by John Drury Clark, "Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants" p 145

And then it let go, with an ear-splitting detonation. Through the
safety glass window we saw a huge red flare as the oil flashed into
flame, only to quench immediately as it hit the ice-cold concrete. We
cut everything off, and went out to survey the damage. The bomb had
fragmented; the burst disc just couldn't rupture fast enough. The
pressure pickup was wrecked, as was the stirrer. The cylindrical
stainless steel pot which had held the oil had been reshaped into something
that would have looked well under a bed. And the oil —it had
been old vacuum pump oil, black and filthy. It had hit the concrete
floor of the test area, the wall of the building, and everything else in
reach, and had cleverly converted itself (the temperature was well
below freezing) into something resembling road tar. I got on the
phone.
"Joe? You know that stuff you sent me to test for thermal stability?
Well, first, it hasn't got any. Second, you owe me a new bomb, a new
Wianco pickup, a new stirrer, and maybe a few more things I'll think
of later. And third (crescendo and fortissimo) you'll have a couple of
flunkies up here within fifteen minutes to clean up this ( — bleep — )
mess or I'll be down there with a rusty hacksaw blade. . . . " I specified
the anatomical use to which the saw blade would be put. End of
conversation.