An African Penguin holds a Valentine's Day card at the California Academy of Sciences on February 13, 2013 in San Francisco, California. In honor of Valentine's Day, the colony of African Penguins at the California Academy of Sciences received heart-shaped red valentines with hand written messages from Academy visitors. (Photo by Justin Sullivan)

An old locomotive train that was used for transporting coal is preserved as a monument at Ny-Alesund, in Svalbard, Norway, October 11, 2015. A Norwegian chain of islands just 1,200 km (750 miles) from the North Pole is trying to promote new technologies, tourism and scientific research in a shift from high-polluting coal mining that has been a backbone of the remote economy for decades. (Photo by Anna Filipova/Reuters)

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

President Barack Obama watches as Joey Hudy (L), 14, from Phoenix, Arizona pumps the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon he invented, while touring student science fair projects on exhibit in the State Dining Room at the White House February 7, 2012 in Washington, DC. Obama hosted the second White House Science Fair celebrating the student winners of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. (Photo by Molly Riley-Pool/Getty Images)

An iCub robot built by the Italian Institute of Technology tracks a ball in the Robotville exhibition at the Science Museum on November 29, 2011 in London, England. The Science Museum's Robotville exhibition showcases 20 unique and cutting-edge robots from European research laboratories, it is free to enter and runs from December 1–4, 2011. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

If we were to burn NH4Cr2O7 with HgSCN in the Dark Ages in Europe and show it to anyone, it is us who would be burning next on a fiery cross of Inquisition. And it’s no wonder, since this experiment produces a truly marvelous result. At first, as you ignite the mixture of NH4Cr2O7 and HgSCN, all you can see is that it is slowly burning with a reddish flame. After a while, however, a crater is formed in the middle of the burning pile, and then, suddenly, tentacle-like appendages start sprouting from the burning mixture. And you can almost hear the scream of the mad occultist – “Come forth, Kraken! Come forth!” But of course, this is simply a chemical reaction that is called the "Pharoah's Serpent". It was also often sold in firework stores until people realized that it was toxic.

50 year-old Italian artist Riccardo Boscolo says about himself that for the last 17 years his passion has been graphics, he likes to draw picturesque caricatures of famous people, mostly actors and politicians, that look like Hollywood actors, showing them from the sides you probably didn’t know.