Word: phosphorus
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...calendar devised by his ingenious priests was a Venus calendar; any knowing citizen of that remarkable civilization was aware that five Venus years were practically equivalent to eight sun years, that eight days elapsed between the last appearance of Hesperus in the west and the first appearance of Phosphorus in the east and that the morning of this first appearance in the east was a morning to be feared, since the light of Venus possessed the power to slay. If the last item implies the existence of what we should call superstition among the Mayas, their calendar, as recently explained...
...Inventor Edison's history was needful. Too well known was the story of the Ohio youth inept at books, fond of dabbling with chemicals, both greengrocer and publisher in his teens, boxed on the ears (and deafened for life) by a furious conductor because a stick of phosphorus started a fire in the mail car in which he traveled with his printing office and chemicals (he was selling magazines on trains at the time and had a laboratory in one end of the mail car), and later of the young telegraph operator with the itch for invention...
...highest ever reached by experiment. At this pressure mercury and hydrogen pass through thick nickel steel as though it were a sieve; and there are six different kinds of ice instead of the one that used to be found in cocktails. At these pressures it was found that white phosphorus when heated to 390 degrees suddenly changed from a colorless, waxy, translucent material to a much denser, jet-black, flaky substance like the graphite or black "lead" used in lead pencils. This is an absolutely new form of the element, with properties all its own and with a smaller chemical...
...better kind of phosphorus for matches is the red variety, which is used on the box in making safety matches, and catches fire if you rub it hard enough with the powdered glass and active chemicals in the head of the match. This is a mild-mannered, quiet sort of a substance, it doesn't catch fire in the air until you heat it quite hot, it won't dissolve in anything, and it can be eaten without any discomfort...
...third form of the element, known as black phosphorus, was discovered in 1910 at Harvard University by Professor Bridgman, who was studying the effects of high pressure...