9 Lost Inventions That Could Have Changed The World

6. Greek Fire - Ancient Napalm

We're heading back to the ancient world again for this one. War has always been the mother of technological innovation; it turns out that we tend to get very creative when someone's trying to kill us. Greek Fire was an incendiary weapon used the the Byzantines in the late 7th century, and it struck fear into the hearts of anyone who had seen or heard of it. it was basically a type of fire that could be shot from a water cannon-like device and would continue to burn, even upon contact with water, and especially upon contact with your face. The actual composition of Greek Fire is not known, but by all accounts, it seems to have been some kind of ancient version of napalm (i.e. not very nice at all) and was well and truly nicked by Game of Thrones, just to give you an idea of what it was like. Nobody ever seemed to write the recipe down, presumably to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, but people have speculated a mixture of pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium phosphide, sulfur, or niter in various combinations. To be honest, it sound so hideous that perhaps it's better left to the hazy depths of history.