Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bending a bar of tin causes its crystals to twin, meaning layers of atoms shift and reorient. That sudden internal realignment produces a crackling or creaking noise called the "tin cry." Indium, cadmium, zinc, and solid mercury share this property.
Tin pest is the spontaneous transformation of metallic beta-tin into brittle, powdery alpha-tin that occurs at low temperatures. Alpha-tin has a diamond cubic crystal structure and no metallic properties. Adding bismuth or antimony to the alloy can prevent the transformation entirely.
Tin has atomic number 50, which is a "magic number" in nuclear physics. Magic numbers correspond to completely filled shells of protons in the nucleus, giving exceptional stability. That stability allows tin to sustain ten stable isotopes, more than any other element on the periodic table.
The International Tin Council, which had stabilized prices by buying and selling from a buffer stockpile since 1947, ran out of credit in late 1985 after years of heavy borrowing. Tin was delisted from the London Metal Exchange for about three years, the price collapsed to roughly $4 per pound, and the ITC dissolved. In Bolivia, COMIBOL laid off more than 20,000 miners as a direct consequence.
Inorganic tin and its common salts are nearly non-toxic, which is why tin-plated steel is used for food cans. Organotin compounds are a different matter. Tributyltin, once widely used in ship paint, is toxic to marine life at concentrations of 1 nanogram per liter and has been banned globally. Certain organotin compounds are described as approaching the toxicity of cyanide.
The Pilkington process, also called the float glass process, produces window glass by floating molten glass on a bath of molten tin. The surface tension of the tin creates a flat, flawless finish on the glass as it cools. Most window glass today is made this way.