Mercury Wells

Mercury well on Earth or Oil well on Mercury?

About 120 years ago there was a victorian businessman who specialised in products made using mercury, a liquid metal element. He made stuff such as thermometers, barometers and even the motor driving the time machine he had invented. One day potential investors visited and wanted to know where he got all his mercury from, as it was fairly rare back then, and they wanted to minimise their risks. He said, the mercury for the thermometers and barometers came from holes in the ground in Montana. And for the time machine? they asked of him. He replied "The time machine is from Hg wells."

Stolen entire from Stu. 

I went looking for a picture of a mercury well but found that mercury doesn't come from wells, it comes from mines. I sort of knew that, but there's always some whiz kid cooking up something so I wouldn't have surprised to find they were drilling for mercury and injecting high pressure steam or gasoline or something to liberate the mercury from its rock prison and send it up the pipe. Anyway, I go looking for a mercury mine and all I can find are mines that have been closed. There were mines in west Texas, and there were big mines in Spain, but now virtually all mercury comes from China. Tjakistan deserves an honorable mention by producing something less than 10% of what China produces. No one else produces even 1% of the world supply. And there''s no pictures of any operational facilities. I couldn't even find a satellite image on Google Maps. Kind of weird, but given its recently discovered toxic nature, not too surprising.