RADIUM

Radium I think has two claims to fame. The first being that it was one of two elements; the other being polonium; that was found by Marie Curie, first woman who won the Nobel Prize, and the other being the whole fad that accompanied radium during the twentieth century. At this time, radiation was a new and emerging science, which lead to many people having fantastical ideas of what this new fact of science was capable of, and as it tends to be in environment which contains money and requires people spend and take in money to live comfortably, there were also people far too willing to exploit the new fascination for profit. And so this lead to many products being advertised to have something ado with 'Radium'; many of which contained radium in name only, but still many which genuinely contained element #88.

One of the best known enterprises under the radium era was watch hands which glowed in the dark; a glow produced when a radium halide activated a phosphor of zinc sulphate. And being the early 20th century, this involved many people working in the factories who exposed themselves to far more radium than anyone ever should be, and many such people also put the brushes - with radium - into their mouths to bring them to a fine point. Radium being an alpha emitter made this horrible enough, but since radium is in the same group of calcium, it accumulates well in the bones and teeth. And many people of the radium industry died painfully as a result. But then, in their wake they left many thousands of little watch hands for collectors to scoop up on the internet. Oip. This watch hand, and a similar one for Radon, were among the last elements to join the collection, in June 2026.