Anyone familiar with old movies is familiar with one sight: the asbestos curtain in theaters, slowly lowered over the stage. Asbestos used to be the country's miracle material, the chief product in fire blankets, insulation, and anything that needed to be protected from fires. However, the miracle material turned quickly into a nightmare.

We're all familiar with reels as tools, whether we're talking about fishing reels, hose reels for fire fighting, or demo reels in the world of filmmaking or video art. But one use of the word "reel" that many of us have forgotten about is the tradition of the reel in dancing--one of the four basic dances of the mysterious highlands of Scotland.

In 2007, a Chinese fire brigade used hoses to end a tense standoff between police and a suspected murderer.

Comic books: one of the few great American art forms, known worldwide as mental rot and poison. But a few comics have attempted to rise above their low image by providing valuable public services. In particular, there's the NFPA's line of fire protection comics for kids.

A fire extinguisher: for most of us, nothing but a standard piece of safety equipment, tied to the wall with extinguisher brackets and sealed in an extinguisher box. But for the early filmmakers of a largely pre-narrative Hollywood, a fire extinguisher of the classic pre-pressurized type was just another means of struggling to develop a common language of film.

Fire extinguishers aren't just nice safety features to have around anymore. The prevalence of chrome extinguishers in modern hotel and restaurant design is starting to revolutionize how the public thinks about one of the inescapable fixtures of modern life: visible safety features.

Symbols: from fire extinguisher signs to airline diagrams, they're becoming a more and more common sight in our world. Some people consider the proliferation of the symbol to be a sign of declining literacy rates worldwide, and with them the decline of civilization in general. But the rise of the symbol is by no means bad--and by no means new.

Fire buckets--one of the great innovations of fire suppression technology, and one that today is largely obsolete. Foam extinguishers and other more modern means of fighting oil fires have become the standard, and the quaint red buckets of sand from yesteryear have become for the most part a thing of the past. But one artist is fighting to ensure that the past remains remarkably present.

A stainless steel extinguisher: a classy piece of decor. A vital tool for fighting large, dangerous fires. And, in some urban areas--a controversial art supply.

Extinguisher stands were hardly a standard safety option during the all-too-brief career of William McGonagall, the Dundee man commonly known even today as the "Worst Poet In The World." But McGonagall--the poetic chronicler of the Tay Bridge Disaster--would have been the first to applaud the invention, though it surely would have spelled the end of his career.