I was reading up on a wonderful little chemical compound known as chlorine trifluoride ($\ce{ClF3}$). For a primer, check out Dr. Derek Lowe's blog post here: Sand Won't Save You This Time. The title of the post is quite telling; this compound is so reactive with other compounds - any other compound, really - that it will set sand on fire, making this old standby for extinguishing lab fires useless and putting the chemical in very rare company indeed. Obviously, water is a huge no-no for chlorine trifluoride; it will exothermically react with the water to produce clouds of steam containing two nasty acids (hydrochloric and hydrofluoric) and a host of chlorate and fluoride compounds. Somewhere in the middle of all the heat, fluorine and organic-ish compounds, you could probably even get some fluorine oxides, which would just LOVE to rapidly reduce their oxidation state (an event normally accompanied by shrapnel).
I was intrigued; I went and looked up the MSDS for this chemical to see what the instructions were for dealing with industrial spills of this stuff (apparently, there's a decent market for it in the semiconductor industry, and probably also for plastics to produce highly fluorinated polymers like Teflon). "A good pair of running shoes" can't be the only answer to a $\ce{ClF3}$ fire. (well, actually, it pretty much is; get everyone in a one mile radius and two miles downwind the hell away from the area)
Now, here's the question. While this stuff has some serious "synergy" when it comes to being an oxidizing agent (it's a better oxidizer than pure oxygen, loads better than pure chlorine, better even than pure fluorine gas), the NFPA flammability rating of the chemical is 0. This, despite reports from those who originally studied it that the chemical is hypergolic with every known fuel substance, and most things you wouldn't consider fuel (like asbestos, sand, concrete, brick, earth, test engineers). The resulting reaction certainly looks like fire; intense heat, bright light, sparks, smoke, the works. So, if chlorine trifluoride doesn't "burn" by the NFPA's definition, what is the NFPA's definition of "burning"?