Marie Curie’s notebooks are still radioactive and will be for more than a millennium.

A lot has changed in the 90 years since Marie Curie’s death, but one thing that hasn’t is the status of her notebooks — they’re still radioactive. Not having the benefit of hindsight despite being one of the 20th century’s most pioneering scientists, Curie was known to store radioactive elements out in the open, in part because she enjoyed how they “looked like faint, fairy lights.” She even walked around her lab with them in her pockets. 

Consequently, her clothes, furniture, and even cookbooks are also radioactive, and will be for the next 1,500 years. In order to be as safe as possible with her remaining materials, France’s national library stores Curie’s notebooks in lead-lined boxes to this day, and anyone wishing to view her manuscripts must sign a waiver and wear protective gear. Her other personal items are stored with similar precautions at the Musée Curie (Curie Museum) in Paris. Curie herself died of aplastic anemia in 1934, likely due to her prolonged exposure to radiation. She didn’t know that she was essentially giving her own life in the pursuit of science, but her unwitting sacrifice has only added to her singular legacy.

Hurricanes used to only be named after women.

SCIENCE & INDUSTRY

Before the 20th century, there was no uniform method for naming hurricanes in the U.S., though some other parts of the world saw creative naming conventions. Residents of the West Indies, for example, named hurricanes after patron saints. And 19th-century British meteorologist Clement Wragge used characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as the last names of his political enemies, for typhoons in the Pacific Ocean. He also began a tradition that eventually made its way across the Atlantic: using women’s names for hurricanes.

Until the 1940s, hurricanes in the U.S. were generally referred to simply by the year and/or place they occurred, such as the “Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.” That changed during World War II, when Navy and Air Force meteorologists began to name the tropical storms they tracked after their girlfriends and wives for easier reference. For a time, the U.S. military also experimented with naming storms after its phonetic alphabet — Able, Baker, Charlie, and so on — but this was replaced with a system thought to be less confusing and easier for the public to remember. In 1954, the National Weather Bureau chose to use women’s names as the standard for hurricanes; that year saw Alice, Barbara, Carol, and others. 

But why women’s names, specifically? The decision was partially inspired by the trend that began during the war, though it was also rooted in sexist stereotypes about the temperamental nature of women. The practice continued in the U.S. until the 1970s, when members of the women’s movement spoke out against the negative characterization of women that pervaded every facet of society, including storm-naming. In 1979, the National Weather Service and the World Meteorological Association changed the naming convention to include an even split of women’s and men’s names, using six groups of 26 names that rotate annually. 

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

It seems that all the candidates on the republican ticket have one strategy and that is to take whatever information they can find on the opposition and twist it to see if they can make it look bad. The other trump card they like to play is race and gender which even their tiny brains have to understand that their lineage was once foreign to this continent.
The big issue of the day is beyond the capability of these pathetic individuals to either address or even speak about. When the synapsis stops firing and all that comes out is blither then it really is time to go home and have a lie down.
The people of the United States need to have capable people in charge of the government. This has not been occurring since 2016 and as long as idiots are being elected the trend will no doubt continue. How much of the nation’s business has been done, how much of the party’s directives from his eminence has been done? Far more of the smoke and mirrors and very little in tangible effort on the nation’s side. The outcry at the 2020 election was to stop the stealing and yet the republican party has been stealing from us ever since that election and shows no sign of stopping.
On a different topic, but still referencing poor leadership and decision making within government. There have been more reported deaths of women during childbirth since the Supreme Court made the decision to overturn Roe V Wade. As someone that has watched for years the way courts and lawsuits have been handled it seems that any family that has lost a loved one due to the change in the law either at the federal or state level should be able to sue for wrongful death.
O.J. Simpson was sued for that after he was acquitted of murder, a gun shop owner was sued after the DC sniper shootings and if you research it you will find more of the same. So if your family has lost a loved one because of laws having been put in place that forbid medical assistance go after every swinging richard in the legislature that passed that law and the governor that signed it as well as the members of the Supreme Court if possible. The stroke of a pen and the blatant attitude that “We know what’s best” needs to come home to roost. If anyone decides to do this and you are successful don’t stop at money, ask for the death penalty, spread the joy.
It is time to get back on track with “Mind your own damn business, and stay out of other peoples”. An abortion may not be something you as an individual would ever consider but it is not your place to make that decision for someone else. You may like cigars and wine and the other person does not. Would you force them to partake? How would you like it if they took it away from you? You can say that the two are not the same, but smoking kills, as does drinking to excess so pick your fight with another set of arguments. Burned at the stake or have your head chopped off— a cold chop versus a hot stake.
Is this a terrible attitude to take? Would it be justice for those that are oh so sure their view of everything is the right one? All of the answers are not found in one unbanded book, look into the eyes of someone that needs the procedure and imagine it is your wife, daughter, sister or mistress and proceed.

5 Little-Known Facts About Ellis Island

Under the watchful eye of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island was the entry point for countless immigrants who came to America at the turn of the 20th century. For a little over 60 years, from 1892 until its closure in 1954, the U.S. Immigration Station on Ellis Island processed more than 12 million immigrants, forever changing the culture of the United States. Today, Ellis Island is a place with a past as complicated as it is influential. Here are five facts about the singular role this 27.5-acre island played in American history.

Advertisement

The Island Has Had at Least Seven Different Names 

Before Europeans colonized North America, Ellis Island was known as Kioshk, or Gull Island, by Mohegan Indigenous peoples. In 1630, the island was purchased by the Dutch, who went on to call it Little Oyster Island for its abundance of, you guessed it, oysters. Later, in the 1700s, the island became the site of a number of hangings and got the nickname “Gibbet Island,” meaning “gallows.” Over the years, the site was also known as Bucking Island, Dyre Island, and Anderson’s Island, until in 1774, the land was purchased by Samuel Ellis, who ran a tavern on the little spit of mud. Ellis died in 1794 and ownership of his namesake island remained with the Ellis family until 1806, when it was sold to a man named John A. Berry, who then sold it to the U.S. government in 1808. 

Related:6 Facts About the Mount Rushmore Presidents

Inspection Took Half a Day — and Not Everyone Passed

For European immigrants who deboarded their ships in good health and with papers in order, the inspection process lasted about half a day. Inspections consisted of a number of physicals as well as a reading test, along with a series of questions, including whether they already had family in America, if they’d ever been to prison, and if they were an anarchist. (The wave of immigration through Ellis Island coincided with a rise in fears about communism and anarchy in the United States.) Up to 20% of the immigrants who went into Ellis Island were detained for either political, legal, or health reasons, and around 2% were sent home. 

More Than 1 Million Immigrants Were Processed in 1907

On April 17, 1907, Ellis Island processed its highest number of immigrants in one day: 11,747 individuals. That year was the immigration facility’s most prolific, and it processed just over 1 million new arrivals. The island’s heyday ended after 1924, when the National Origins Act (part of the Immigration Act of 1924) restricted the number of immigrants who could come to the United States. 

Some 40% of Americans Can Trace Their Roots to Ellis Island

The majority of immigrants who came through Ellis Island arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe, escaping a number of difficulties ranging from poverty to religious or ethnic persecution. Today, it’s believed that almost half of Americans can trace part of their ancestry back to Ellis Island. Modern visitors can stop by the Family History Center at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration to explore their families’ roots.

One of the first White House pets was John Adams’ dog Satan.

FAMOUS FIGURES

A lthough he was the second president of the United States, John Adams was the first to (briefly) live in the presidential residence now known as the White House. That means he and his wife, Abigail, inaugurated such White House traditions as the selection of furnishings, the hosting of official gatherings, and the introduction of presidential pets — one of whom answered to the moniker of Satan.

Despite the copious surviving correspondence between John and Abigail Adams, there exist few juicy details about this devilishly named dog for historians to sink their canines into. We do know that the pup shared the White House grounds with another mixed-breed named Juno (and possibly a third dog, named Mark). We can also deduce that Satan had to compete for the divided attention of the horse-loving president, who built the White House stables to house his carriage horses Cleopatra and Caesar. 

Though they were the first to bring animal residents to the White House, the Adamses were not the last presidential family to bestow their pets with unusual names. Later nonhuman occupants of the Pennsylvania Avenue mansion include Benjamin Harrison’s opossums Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection; Rutherford B. Hayes’ cats Siam, Miss Pussy, and Piccolomini; and Theodore Roosevelt’s guinea pigs Admiral Dewey, Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O’Grady. But as with other matters of American presidential history, it’s hard to top the standard set by George Washington, who blessed his dogs with such memorable names as Drunkard, Madame Moose, and Sweet Lips.

Thomas Edison revolutionized the audio world in 1878 when he obtained a patent for his latest invention, the phonograph. The audio player was designed for at-home use, but Edison also had larger-than-life plans for the product, in a very literal sense: He aspired to install a massive phonograph inside the Statue of Liberty to make Lady Liberty capable of speech. Edison revealed his intent to design a “monster disc” to produce audible messages, to make it sound as if the statue were uttering the words herself. He informed reporters that the phonograph could not only be used to alert ships during heavy fog, but also, if amplified properly, create a loud enough sound to produce words that could be heard as far as northern Manhattan and across New York Harbor. Despite Edison’s optimistic and ambitious ideas, the project never came to fruition, and the statue remained silent.

While Edison failed in making Lady Liberty talk, he succeeded on a much smaller scale by creating the first talking doll toy. In April 1890, Edison’s factory produced a set of 22-inch-tall dolls with miniature phonographs embedded in the torso. Some 500 were sold. Unfortunately, the dolls were returned in droves, as their fragile voice boxes were easily destroyed upon being played with. What’s more, the dolls sang songs such as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” but the sound was eerie and distorted due to the rudimentary phonographic technology. The toy was a massive flop for Edison, though it inspired future generations of successful talking dolls.