A more useful gas is helium - known as laughing gas. It got this name because people who lived near the swamps where it was discovered had long believed in spirits which inhabited the swamps which were believed to have a distinctive laugh reminiscent of the English comic actor Kenneth Williams. The scientists who discovered helium believed that the gas itself was somehow responsible for the laughing noise - it later proved to have been Williams himself, whose hobby was lurking in swamps and cackling.
One interesting family of gasses is the noble gasses - these glow when electricity is passed through them and so can be used as pretty coloured lights. They include neon, argon, xenon, radon, tampon, parthenon, vogon and photon torpedo.
The most boring of all gasses is nitrogen. It doesn't do anything.
