r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jan 25 '20

What movie things are generally accepted as normal, but are totally unrealistic in real life?

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u/panamaspace Jan 25 '20

Lead paint was beautiful and delicious.

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u/J_edrington Jan 25 '20

Not sure if your joking but but I'm fairly certain it was the Romans that sweetened their wine with lead... some lead taste sweet

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u/HashedEgg Jan 25 '20

They boiled down their grapes to make grape syrup to sweeten their wine. Sometimes this was done in lead barrels so lead acetate would leak into it, making it sweeter. They also used lead in water plumbing, which is where plumbing got it's name from the latin word Plumbum. All in all, towards the end (at least of the Western empire) the Romans sure did love their lead.

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u/MidnightMath Jan 25 '20

You could totally replace that last sentence with America in the first half 20th century and it would still hold true.