In the late 1970s, probably 1979, I was taking a high school chemistry class. One day the whole class, and classes across the region took a standardized chemistry test. My teacher, Mr Serpas, showed us a t-shirt that would go to the person who scored the highest in the class. It was a brown shirt (this was the 70s) with a big picture of a guy from perhaps the 1700s or 1800s with a big head of curly hair. Maybe a bit like Bach or Isaac Newton.
I scored the highest in the class and got the t-shirt. I wore it a lot. The picture on the front was (by my recollection all these years later) Jean Claude Emile Baptiste Litre, the person the litre is named after.
This morning I looked it up on a whim. I was a bit off on the name. It also seems there was never any such person. It was all an elaborate prank. I guess someone who made the t-shirts from the River Parishes high school chemistry survey that year fell for it. And I guess I did too, at least until today.
Steven A. Guccione 