Fun fact: The Czochralski process, which is one of the best ways to produce large single crystals of a material (used industrially to produce exceptionally pure silicon crystals for semiconductor devices), was invented when the Polish chemist Jan Czochralski accidentally dipped his pen in a pot of molten tin instead of an inkwell.
Moral of the story: keep pots of molten tin around, maybe you'll accidentally get your name attached to a hugely important industrial process