News of the 21st Century: the Navy is synthesizing hagfish slime and contemplating its potential.

“From a tactical standpoint, it would be interesting to have a material that can change the properties of the water at dilute concentrations in a matter of seconds,” Ryan Kincer, a materials engineer at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division, said in a statement.

The Navy also envisions using the material in products to protect firefighters and divers, as an anti-shark spray, and as a coating for ships to protect against algae, barnacles and other aquatic life that typically attach to them.

The Lovecraft Collection. Scents inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Iä! Iä!

My favourite (I leave identification of this scent's name as an exercise for the reader):

A small, furry, sharp-toothed scent that will nuzzle you curiously in the black hours before dawn: dusty white sandalwood and orris root, dry coconut husk, creeping musk, and the residue of ceremonial incense.

Courtesy of Derb, who I hadn't realized was a Lovecraftian.

Neal Stephenson got me thinking about phosphorus; and the Internet was there for me.

As is before shewed, take Urine well putrefied in a Tub, exposed to the Air for seven Weeks, all one as you do when you're to make a Spirit of it; the Spirit being drawn, or rather the whole of it being evaporated to the consistance of Honey, in which lies the Fosperus; but the Art is somewhat difficult to get it from thence, in two cases, the one is in making choice of a proper Agent to be mixed therewith, and the other is the exact regiment of the Fire.

I cannot, however, track down an online edition of Boyle's The aerial noctiluca: or some new phoenomena, and a process of a factitious self-shining substance.

Please don't try the last experiment on the above website. There exist easier ways.