In 1859, at Titusville, Penn., Col. Edwin Drake drilled the first successful well through rock and produced crude oil. What some called “Drake’s Folly” was the birth of the modern petroleum industry. He sold his “black gold” for $20 a barrel.

One long-standing mystery of the painting is why Mona Lisa features very faint eyebrows and apparently does not have any eyelashes. In October 2007, Pascal Cotte, a French engineer and inventor, says he discovered with a high-definition camera that Leonardo da Vinci originally did paint eyebrows and eyelashes.

Digboi is known as the Oil City of Assam where the first oil well in Asia was drilled. The first refinery was started here as early as 1901. Digboi has the oldest oil well in operation….

The discovery of the Spindletop geyser in 1901 drove huge growth in the oil industry. Within a year, more than 1,500 oil companies had been chartered, and oil became the dominant fuel of the 20th century and an integral part of the American economy.

How was oil viewed until the late 1850’s? It was an annoyance. 4.

No one knows for sure how much oil there is in a given area until people drill there, but geologists can make an educated guess. Geologists can measure the density of underground rocks by sending radio waves into the ground and measuring the speed with which they reflect back to the surface.

Back when records began, oil wells were an average of 3,635 feet deep. But that was 65 years ago – and since 1949 we have used up these ‘shallow’ reserves. Oil is a finite resource, meaning we now have to dig deeper to find it – with the 2008 average depth coming in at an average of 5,964 feet.

The 5 Best Places in the World for Oil and Gas Investment

1. Oklahoma.
2. Mississippi.
3. Texas.
4. North Dakota.
5. Manitoba. This is Canada’s only province in the top five, surprising giving Alberta’s prominent role in developing oil sands (that province ranked 21st in the survey).