I was surprised to find that an Internet search for "Mendeleyev sesquicenten-nial" returned only 644 hits. For people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the Periodic Table of the Elements may be the greatest scientific achievement ever. The observance of its sesquicentennial, however, has received what amounts to an oh-how-nice-I-suppose treatment. For the life of me, I can't fathom why. Just because it combines something understood mainly by chemistry nerds with the 150th anniversary of something?
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