That version of the story goes something like this: On July 1, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan departed from Lae, New Guinea in Earhartâs Lockheed Electra 10, on what was to be the longest portion of Earhartâs highly publicized round-the-world flight.
The youngest coal is not even coal yet -- peat. Peat is a traditional fuel in parts of the world, like Ireland, where it is cut from the earth, dried, and burned for heat. The energy content of peat is quite low. Young coal is called lignite, and is soft and brown, not much different than dried peat.
In light of this it is understandable that the fuel used for day-to-day cooking fires would also be used for forge fires as men discovered the various methods of shaping and working with metals. When coal was discovered it was found to produce a hotter fire than charcoal. As coal begins to burn, all of the various impurities (tars, oils, sulfur, various trace elements and gases, etc) are burned off, and all that remains is pure carbon.