In 1916, a bearded Long Island showman named Louis Enricht gathered reporters on his lawn and offered them a gasoline substitute that would "sell for a penny a gallon" — wartime alchemy, with gas running short on Europe's battlefields. He had them inspect a small car's empty tank, fill a bucket with garden-hose water, then tip in two ounces of a greenish, almond-smelling fluid. The car started and puttered around Farmingdale for half an hour.
Writing in True in 1965, Alan Hynd recounts how Enricht — who never revealed his "formula" — used the stunt to fleece Henry Ford (a $10,000 check) and Hiram Percy Maxim's munition works (rights for a reported $1 million).
Chemists called it "absolutely and utterly impossible." Enricht, who'd already pulled off land and bankruptcy frauds, finally drew seven years — not for the half-million he'd taken, but for sidetracking $2,000 of an investor's money.
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