One of my favourite scenes in Star Trek IV is the one where Scotty, posing as an inventor, gives the president of a 1980s acrylics manufacturer the formula for transparent aluminum in exchange for tank materials. Scotty justifies the blatant timeline alteration to McCoy by asking, "Well, how do we know he didn't invent the thing?"

Slashdot reports that we may now add transparent aluminum to the science fact column, as the US air force is currently testing a compound called aluminum oxynitride as a replacement for the traditional multi-layered glass now used in their vehicles. Neat-O.