Indonesian women sit on a hill as the Suralaya coal power plant looms in the background in Cilegon, Indonesia, on January 8, 2023. A plan for how Indonesia will spend $20 billion to transition to cleaner energy was submitted Wednesday, Aug. 16, to the government and its financing partners, the planners said. (Photo by Dita Alangkara/AP Photo)

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.

The world's longest moustache (belonging to one Ram Singh Chauhan of Rajasthan, India) measures a staggering 11.5 feet, or nearly 4 metres.

Отава Ё – Яблочко (Otava Yo – Yablochko; Russian: Яблочко, “Little Apple”). Yablochko is a Russian folk song of chastushka style and dance, traditionally presented as sailors' dance. The choreographed version of the dance first appeared in the 1926 Reinhold Glière ballet The Red Poppy and from there is known in the West as the Russian Sailors Dance.

A student shouts slogans against Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro during a protest on the main highway in Caracas on March 30, 2017. Venezuela' s Supreme Court took over legislative powers Wednesday from the opposition- majority National Assembly, whose speaker accused leftist President Nicolas Maduro of staging a “coup”. (Photo by Juan Barreto/AFP Photo)

Russian riot policemen beat young PREGNANT female anti-Putin activist during a protest rally against the Presidential inauguration of Vladimir Putin on May 6, 2012 in Moscow, Russia.

A woman wearing a protective mask is seen behind a girl dressed in a Plague Doctor Mask in Western-Ukrainian city of Lviv, Ukraine, 22 March 2020. Ukrainian Designer Anastasia Markovska sewed protective masks looking like Plague Doctor Masks, the traditional costume of Venice Carnival, for herself and her friends due to the ongoing pandemic of the COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. In Ukraine had been 47 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19, including three deaths and one recovery as Ukraine's Health Ministry announced. (Photo by Pavlo Palamarchuk/EPA/EFE)

Vendor Nyurgusun Starostina, 47, poses for a picture at an open-air market on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia, December 5, 2023. Temperatures in parts of the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia and located in the northeastern part of Siberia, went below minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit) on December 5. (Photo by Roman Kutukov/Reuters)