Uisce Beatha

Uisce Beatha, for those of you who don't already know, is whiskey. The literal translation is water of life. Anyway whiskey comes in barrels and way back in the Pennsylvania of the 1800s oilmen were so overwhelmed by the amount of oil they were getting from their oil wells that they collected the oil in whiskey barrels. This is the reason that the barrel is the oil industry's standard unit. In case you're wondering the barrel is equal to about 42 gallons.

Something if a slightly ironic measurement these days, n'est-ce pas?