A lump of the black substance, which can be broken with a hammer, was put into a glass funnel - and the waiting began. A decade after the late Professor Thomas Parnell, formerly from Cambridge University, began the process, the first of eight drops fell.

The viscous liquid continued its incredibly slow, but inexorable, journey downwards, and in 1947 the second drop fell.

The next drops occurred in 1954, 1962, 1970, 1979, 1988 and lastly in 2000 when the webcam that was trained on the experiment broke at the crucial stage.

Read then entire*YAWN* here.