Liquid oxygen soaked charcoal has been used as an explosive.
That kind of comment is a little on the nose…
I know, very pale but a nice blue. Did some measurements on it in Thermo lab back in college.
I mentioned this here long ago and got challenged about it. Now I can at least point to the Wikipedia article on it.
Scary stuff.
Vantablack, the worlds blackest substance, can absorb over 99.9% of visible light. And only one person in the world, Anish Kapoor, can use it for “Art”.
There is a plot to a mystery novel in there someplace.
Ded it again.
I can’t tell you what the flowers were, but I can tell you the pigment family which was probably involved: anthocyanins (wiki). A version with longer words (science direct).
Putrecine and cadaverine are two nasty-smelling compounds found in decaying flesh. They’re worth knowing just for the names.
And possibly limburger cheese.
When I was shown how to use a high vac pump for drying compounds as an undergrad, the instructor was very clear on how to handle the cold trap - once finished with the pump and opening the system to air, if you leave the trap sitting in the liq nitrogen dewar it will start to condense liquid oxygen. Given the trap will often also contain volatile hydrocarbons you’ve stripped off your samples, this is a good way to make a small bomb. So don’t ever do this.
Don’t know if he was being alarmist or not, but some people I subsequently worked with didn’t get this same training - I’ve seen liq oxygen condensed a few times over the years on vac pump traps. Once enquired in a slightly panicked voice what the pale blue liquid was in the vac line trap of a French co-worker. He just gave a Gallic shrug, removed the trap and lashed the contents on the floor 
That’s one way to deal with LOX - athough it was only a few mL tbf.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned William Henry Perkin and his “serendipitous discovery of the first synthetic organic dye, mauveine” to quote Wikipedia. It’s one of those stories that I seem to hear over and over. I’m not sure if the dye is named after the color or the color is named after the dye, since the dye made the color so easy to produce.
It’s been done. There is a Dorothy Sayres short story, I don’t recall the title, about someone who was poisoned–accidentally IIRC–by pouring a drink from an old bottle of amoretto that had not moved for a long time so that the cyanide had concentrated in the top. Then there is a recent novel, “The three body problem” by Catherine Shaw, which I won’t spoil further, that uses this as a pot device.
Wow, that’s cool. I remember my physics professor in the doing a gimmick where he put up 2 pieces of paper on a cardboard box, both with black squares in the middle. One was noticeably darker. He said if you could make an ink that black you’d make millions. It was a square hole cut out of the box. 
This looks like it could be that substance.
There was a bit of a reaction to Anish Kapoor’s “blackest black,” such that an artist named Stuart Semple came up with the world’s pinkest pink, and made it available to anyone except Anish Kapoor. Yeah, a stunt, but a fun one. (And, from what I’ve read and heard, it really is a damned pink pink.)
The dye after the color.
Does mimeograph ink count?
Missed the edit window re mimeograph ink. The color appears unique, and the scent, well, how can you forget it?
You are probably talking about the alcohol smell from a “ditto” machine, aka a “spirit duplicator”. It uses a 50/50 mix of isopropanol and methanol.
A mimeograph machine uses a stencil process and is far less smelly.
Yes, thank you.
And Anish Kapoor’s reaction…
slightly NSFW, http://https://www.newser.com/story/236079/artists-feud-over-pinkest-pink-escalates.html
BTW, Anish Kapoor is the Milenium Park Bean guy.