Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" is an amazing list of blog posts detailing all the crazy things chemicals can do to you.
For example his chlorine trifluoride post starts off this way...
"Let's put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction."
