In 2008, researchers at the University of California unrolled an ordinary roll of sticky tape inside a vacuum chamber. As the glue and tape separate, they build up opposite electric charges, then discharge violently. The result was bursts of X-rays strong enough to image a finger. Rest assured, in ordinary air your tape dispenser produces nothing of the sort.
Cooled below −183 °C, oxygen turns into a pale blue liquid. Pour it between the poles of a strong magnet and, instead of flowing away, it hangs suspended between them. The reason lies in its unpaired electrons, which respond to the magnetic field. Liquid nitrogen, by contrast, is colourless and pours straight through.
In 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from a capsule hanging beneath a balloon, about 39 kilometres up. In that extremely thin air almost nothing slowed him down, and he reached around 1,358 km/h in free fall, or Mach 1.25. He became the first person to exceed the speed of sound with nothing but his own body.