Mercury is defiantly toxic and care needs to be taken, but there seems to be a bit of miss-information floating about.
For common mercury or quicksilver the vapour is the real killer. While you should wear gloves while handling it normal mercury will not be absorbed by the human skin, and would need an open wound for that to happen. In relation to the death of a laboratory worker in the United States in 1997 due to the use of inappropriate (latex) gloves, that was Dimethylmercury, which is quiet different to normal mercury.
Do not expose it to materials such as aluminum, magnesium, zinc, copper, brass, or bronze which can cause it to combust.
I have never heard this before, as mercury would amalgamate with most of those metals, so no combustion there.
It is a severe fire hazard, with a flash point of -4C.
This makes no sense as mercury is non-volatile and will not form an ignitable mixture in air, so there is no flashpoint though it has an extremely low vaporisation point.