In CosmeticsĪlfred Curie’s product line didn’t end with dental care, though. Alfred Curie, who was not related to Marie or Pierre but didn’t miss an opportunity to capitalize on their name. Toothpaste containing both radium and thorium was sold by a man named Dr. Noting radium’s famed luminescence, the ad also mentions that the radiumscope could double as a “wonderful” nightlight, since it “glows with a weird light in a dark room.” 4. The Radiumscope, a toy sold as late as 1942, offered a glimpse of radium in action. Radium water crocks like the Revigator stored a gallon of water inside a radium-laced bucket drinking the water would cure any number of ailments, from arthritis to impotence to wrinkles. In Chocolateįood products containing radium, like the Radium Schokolade chocolate bar manufactured by Burk & Braun and Hippman-Blach bakery’s Radium Bread, made with radium water, were popular overseas until they were discontinued in 1936.
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. 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.īy 1910, radium was manufactured synthetically in the U.S. 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. Radium was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898.