Did you know?
Fluorite gave fluorescence its name. In 1852 the physicist George Stokes, studying the mineral's glow under invisible light, coined the word for the whole phenomenon after the stone itself.
Barite feels surprisingly heavy for a pale crystal, the weight of its barium. Around 1603 a Bologna shoemaker roasted some and found it glowed in the dark, the Bologna stone, the first artificial phosphor ever made.
