Also in bill Brysons a complete history of nearly everything he recounts a story of a serial entrepreneur who was trying to come up with an inexpensive way to s

Also in bill Brysons a complete history of nearly everything he recounts a story of a serial entrepreneur who was trying to come up with an inexpensive way to synthesize penicillin and one of his ideas was putting buckets of urine in his basement. He found that months later there was a substance that collected on the surface that glowed in the dark. He purified it and found it had a very low ignition temperature, one so low it was achievable through friction, so he put it on the end of a stick and invented strike anywhere matches.