About electricity, up to not so many years ago (here in Italy up to around 1990) electrical codes were fairly "open", with no ground/earth requirement, and up to the 1970's or so it was not so uncommon to have houses with external wires, see:
How we (kids in the '60's and '70's) managed to largely survive these and all the other everyday risks (no helmet on motorbikes, no safety belts in cars, etc.) remains a mistery.
But in the case reported here that today an electrician would ground an outlet to water plumbing, it would be - well before being forbidden - unthinkable of.
Ah, those were the days. Back in the 80s my parents bought us a chemistry set from a thrift store that was probably 20 years old already. It was actually set up to teach some practical chemistry by providing a mystery substance and a set of reagents that would help you figure out what the substance was. Ten year old me just cut to the finish line and tasted the mystery substance - it was sugar.
Yep, but back then we were much more reckless, just the other day there was a story on HN on amateur chemistry (dying or dead):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33517520
About electricity, up to not so many years ago (here in Italy up to around 1990) electrical codes were fairly "open", with no ground/earth requirement, and up to the 1970's or so it was not so uncommon to have houses with external wires, see:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29616691
How we (kids in the '60's and '70's) managed to largely survive these and all the other everyday risks (no helmet on motorbikes, no safety belts in cars, etc.) remains a mistery.
But in the case reported here that today an electrician would ground an outlet to water plumbing, it would be - well before being forbidden - unthinkable of.