Maybe it was Knecht Ruprecht
________________________________ From: "cardemais...@yahoo.com" <cardemais...@yahoo.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, September 9, 2013 11:51 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Nickel and Santa? Wikipedia: In medieval Germany, a red mineral was found in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) that resembled copper ore. However, when miners were unable to extract any copper from it, they blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick), for besetting the copper. They called this ore Kupfernickel from the German Kupfer for copper.[27][28][29][30] This ore is now known to be nickeline or niccolite, a nickel arsenide. In 1751, Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt was trying to extract copper from kupfernickel—and instead produced a white metal that he named after the spirit that had given its name to the mineral, nickel.[31] In modern German, Kupfernickel or Kupfer-Nickel designates the alloy cupronickel.
