A YEAR OF STUMBLING ALONG

the periodic table contains elements familiar to us all: hydrogen, for instance – one of the building blocks of life – and other less familiar natural elements such as copernicium, or the incredibly rare astatine.

But none are as rare as hazenile.

That’s because hazenile doesn’t exist … except briefly in the mind of during September who told would-be investors at an international conference that hazenile – a battery mineral – was to be found in the country’s famed Congo Caves. Like hazenile, the location was also a fiction, invented by an April