"Moissan certainly would have inhaled fluorine and hydrogen fluoride fumes during the course of his work, but he managed to avoid becoming a casualty of the halogen—not through any effective safety measures, but by preemptively dying of appendicitis just two months after his Nobel award ceremony." Love the writing. Reminds me of Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" series. See http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi... for a favorite.
> " I ran out of vulgar expletives after the second page. A. G. Streng, folks, absolutely takes the corrosive exploding cake, and I have to tip my asbestos-lined titanium hat to him."