For some reason the Lady Be Good, a B-24 Liberator bomber that crashed in North Africa in 1943, popped into my head; so I decided to read about it. Rather than dig out my B-24 book, I just went to Wiki, which says:
I’m assuming that the author means ‘drinkable’ in that it was still tea-viscosity and safe to consume, rather than in the sense that gasoline is ‘drinkable’.
How could a thermos of tea be drinkable after 16 years? If it were made with boiling water and put into the thermos immediately, I assume there would be no harmful bacteria in it. Cooling may have sucked the lid tighter against the gasket. If the internal vessel were glass and did not break in the crash, I suppose the acidic tea would not have anything to react with. Is that it?
(In any case, it sounds like an excellent thermos and I want one.)