Do you know that the Spaniards

called platina,

little silver,

the precious metal

discovered in Colombia

and they were discarding it

thinking that it wasn’t

but a simple impurity?

But it gets even stranger.

Do you wish to know it?

It is astronomers

who discovered it

not in the sky

but on earth.

For they had another vision!

Who remembers them except us?

Antonio de Ulloa and don Jorge Juan y Santacilia,

these are their names.

Sent by the king to Peru

after their discovery,

the English who had captured them

forced them into not publishing anything

before the date of 1748

for not divulging

the existence of the unknown metal!

Only Charles Wood

succeeded in isolating it independently

in the year of grace 1741.

This is the story of platinum.