I was watching this video of BBC's QI and Today I learned a few things about Radium and Madame Curie.
from W: > "[At the beginning of the 20th century] The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without taking any safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark."
People had no idea that Radium was harmful and it was used on many things that were placed in direct contact with the skin, or actually ingested. Millionaire Eben Byers is noted for drinking 1500 bottles of a "snake oil" radium tonic recommended to him by his doctor. This led to radium being absorbed into all of the bones in his body, leading to the decay of his jaw and eventually his death.
See also the Radium Girls.
Also from that show, TIL that most tigers live not in the wild, nor in zoos, but are kept as private pets.
Also from that show, TIL that a volleyball-sized octopus can squeeze down to the size of a soda can. Reminded me of the story of a octopus learning how to unscrew his tank and flooding an aquarium somewhere on the intarwebs.
Have fun watching the other QI videos from that user.
EDIT: crap I messed up the title :facepalm:
This is an automatic summary, original reduced by 83%.
> The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later.
> Between 1917 and 1926, the U.S. Radium Corporation hired around 70 women from Essex County, NJ, and by 1927, more than 50 of those women had died as a direct result of radium paint poisoning that was eating their bones from the inside, to put it simply.
> At the dawn of the 20th century, radium was America's favourite new miracle ingredient, and radium-based household commercial products had become the norm, from cold remedies and toothpaste to wool for babies, children's toys and even drinking water.
> The most baffling part about this story is not the fact that the general public had no idea that radium was so dangerous, but the fact that some people most certainly did! And yet, they sat back and watched as everyone around them was poisoning themselves.
> Radium had also quickly become a veritable marketing force the world over and US Radium was a defence contractor with influential contacts and deep pockets to protect its interests.
> It would later be revealed that the two experts who had examined her were not doctors at all but a toxicologist on the US Radium payroll and one of the vice-presidents of US Radium.
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I knew I made the right choice because the week after I left, my closest friend's bones had become so weak that her jaw simply fell off from her skull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
A company used radioactive paint to make their watch faces and dials glow. Because these dials are so small, they had to be individually hand painted.
The company, US Radium Corporation, knew the harmful effects of radium; their (mostly male) scientists and chemists used lead shielding and minimized exposure as normal protocol. They had pamphlets.
But, the ladies who actually painted the watch pieces - who were paid approx 1.5 cents per piece - were advised that the paints and powders (which the ladies mixed themselves) were perfectly safe, being encouraged to lick their brushes often to keep a fine painting tip. Details matter, I guess.
Even as the company distributed literature about the dangers of radiation to their science and medical teams, the painters were told nothing. Remember, the intentional use of radioactive materials was rather new - their dangers were far from common knowledge back then.
Even as the girls' jaws began to melt off, the company said nothing.
After 50 or so painters died or fell ill within short period of time, the company (who knew the dangers of radiation) tried to blame syphilis and other diseases. Better to try to make the women look bad, and hint as promiscuity, then publicly admit the thing they already knew about the dangers of prolonged exposure to radioactive materials.
Eventually there were lawsuits that led to what would eventually become OSHA regulations and established the legal right of employees to sue their employer for knowingly causing them harm.
The lawsuit had to be won *eight times over (eventually reaching the US Supreme Court) before the company paid out.
(And I barely scratched the surface of the various ways the company tried to cop out or cover up the cause of the illnesses before being forces to admit the truth).
I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.
Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.
Do your worst!
They were cooked in Greece.
I'm surprised it hasn't decade.
Don't you know a good pun is its own reword?
