"As [sic] unspecified assistant with quick reflexes reversed the helium valve, but he turned it either the wrong way or too far, because instead of halting the flow of helium, he caused it all to be vented into the laboratory. Dewar's notes do not indicate whether a high-pitched apology was offered."
(Although some proofreading would have been useful.)
"A chunk of helium ice would behave as a single, solid, oversized, and stupefyingly slippery atom, which may be capable of passing ghost-like through certain materials. But that's another matter altogether."
Onnes hastened to make observations with the small container of -271°C fluid before it all evaporated away. He found it had a lower surface tension than any previously observed liquid, and just 1/8th the density of water. The modest amount of the stuff he had been able to collect behaved very curiously in general, flowing with strange characteristics and evading easy observation as if enveloped in an SEP field.
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem_fi...
http://www.damninteresting.com/nineteen-seventy-three/
Summary: A guy tries to build a networked central economic planning computer system.... in 1973.