These Everyday Items Were Dosed With Radium Until We Discovered It Was Toxic
WikimediaRadium was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898.
In 1903, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, making Marie the first woman to win the prize.
Later, in 1911, she would win her second Nobel for isolating radium, discovering another element (polonium), and for her research into the new phenomenon of radioactivity, a word she coined herself.
By 1910, radium was manufactured synthetically in the U.S. But before the effects of radiation exposure were well understood, radium ended up in a lot of crazy places for its purported magical healing properties and its glow-in-the-dark novelty.
This story was originally published by mental_floss.
This article originally appeared at Mental_Floss. Copyright 2012.
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