Marie Curie coined the term radioactive, and with her husband Pierre discovered radium and polonium. The couple worked in a shed that became covered with radioactive dust, but they didn't mind. They even went out there at night to admire the glowing bottles of radioactive chemicals. After Pierre's death. Marie worked in a laboratory in Paris (now a museum) for twenty years until her death in 1934. She handled radium with her bare hands, because it wasn't thought of as particularly dangerous. In fact, in those days, radium was seen as a miracle of sorts, used in cosmetics, drinks, remedies, and glow-in-the-dark paint.
The atomic age made us all more aware of the dangers. In the 1980s, Marie Curie's lab was decontaminated. The surfaces were all scrubbed, and the cabinets sent to a nuclear waste site. In the 1990s, the Curies were exhumed and reburied in lead coffins due to radioactivity. In 2020, the Curies' granddaughter had her family heirlooms tested for radioactivity. The results led her to send her grandmother's cupboard to a nuclear waste facility. Recently, a team was allowed to search for radioactive fingerprints remaining in Marie Curie's laboratory. There they found the places she had touched, still emitting radioactivity as the materials had sunk into the wood. Read about the radioactive Marie Curie at BBC Future. -via Curious About Everything
(Image: unknown, colorized by VictoriaKC)