# 16-year-old drinkable tea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 17, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/16-year-old-drinkable-tea/481718 "2009-01-17T06:16:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/16-year-old-drinkable-tea/481718/1 "2009-01-17T06:16:07Z")
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_be_Good_(aircraft)), which says: > [@](#): > > A recovery team made initial trips from Wheelus Air Base to the crash site on May 26, 1959… > > … A thermos of tea was found to be drinkable. 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.) ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/16-year-old-drinkable-tea/481718/2 "2009-01-17T16:39:12Z")
I’m guessing that it meant that it hadn’t evaporated, didn’t smell nasty and didn’t have obvious chunky, moldy things floating in it. I doubt that they did a chemical analysis to see if it was totally safe to consume.