Dynamite

Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel, a chemist from Sweden, in 1867. Alfred's father ran a company that made explosives. One of these explosives was "nitroglycerin". Nitroglycerin was used to blast rock in mines, to make tunnels, or to flatten ground for construction. It was very unstable, though. Simply shaking a bottle of nitroglycerin was enough to make it explode. Alfred Nobel discovered that he could make it more stable if he mixed it with an absorbing material. This made it in to a paste that could be shaped.