Tin does two odd things that were noticed long before they were understood.
The first is the tin cry. Bending a bar of tin produces an audible crackling, caused by crystal planes slipping past one another. It is a simple test for the metal and has been used as one.
The second is tin pest. Below about 13 degrees C the ordinary metallic form, white tin, is no longer the stable one; it converts slowly to grey tin, a brittle powdery semiconductor with a different crystal structure and a substantially larger volume. The conversion is slow near the transition temperature and faster in severe cold, and it spreads outward from a nucleation point, which is why it looks like a disease. Tin organ pipes, pewter vessels and tin buttons left in unheated buildings through hard winters have crumbled to grey dust, and the effect was attributed to the devil before it was attributed to crystallography. The story that Napoleon's army in Russia lost its uniform buttons this way is frequently repeated and is not supported by evidence; the phenomenon is real, that particular case is not established.
Tin's modern life is chiefly as a coating and as solder. The tin can, patented by Peter Durand in 1810, is steel with a thin tin lining, tin being non-toxic and resistant to food acids, and it changed the storage and transport of food permanently. Tin-lead solder joined electronic assemblies for most of the twentieth century until lead was legislated out, and tin-based alloys replaced it. Pewter is tin with copper and antimony; bell metal and speculum metal are high-tin bronzes.