Radium Was Sold as a Health Product and It Killed the People Who Trusted It

 When Marie Curie discovered radium in 1898 the world was fascinated.

Here was a substance that glowed. That produced energy seemingly from nothing. That was unlike anything science had ever described before. The early 20th century did not yet understand the danger. What it understood was the wonder.

And where there is wonder, there are people ready to sell it.

What They Sold

Within years of radium's discovery consumer products containing radium were appearing on the market with claims that the element's energy could improve health, restore vitality, cure disease, and enhance beauty.

Radithor was a bottled water product containing dissolved radium that was marketed as a cure for impotence and general vitality. Wealthy consumers drank it regularly. One prominent socialite and athlete named Eben Byers consumed over 1,400 bottles before doctors noticed his jaw was literally falling off his skull. He died in 1932. A Wall Street Journal headline about his case read The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Fell Off.

Radium face cream was sold with promises that the radioactive glow would translate into a glowing complexion. Radium toothpaste was marketed because it made teeth glow in the dark which was presented as evidence of its cleansing power. Radium chocolate was sold in Germany. Radium suppositories existed.

These products were not fringe items sold by obvious charlatans. They were mainstream consumer goods sold in reputable stores and endorsed in respectable publications.

The Radium Girls

The most documented human cost of radium's early misuse falls on a group of young women who painted watch dials at the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey starting in the 1910s.

The dial painters were instructed to point their paintbrushes with their lips to get a fine tip. They ingested radium every day at work. Supervisors assured them the substance was harmless. Some workers painted their fingernails and teeth with it as a joke because it glowed in the dark.

Years later their bones were disintegrating. Their jaws were developing necrosis. They were dying of cancers that contemporary medicine could barely explain.

The women fought back. Despite being sick and despite company lawyers working against them they pursued legal action. Their cases established that companies could be held liable for exposing workers to hazardous conditions and helped lay the groundwork for modern workplace safety law.

Their sacrifice is documented. Their names should be known. Grace Fryer. Edna Hussman. Katherine Schaub. Albina Larice. Quinta McDonald.

They are the reason American workers have some of the workplace protections they have today.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

How to Build a Free Digital Archive of Your Life That Will Outlast Everything You Own

 Most people think that preserving their history requires money. Special equipment. Technical knowledge. A plan they will get to someday when things are less busy.

None of that is true.

You can build a free permanent digital archive of your life right now using tools that already exist, that cost nothing, and that require no technical skill beyond knowing how to use a phone.

Here is exactly how to do it.

Step One: Create Your Archive Home Base on the Internet Archive

Go to archive.org and create a free account. This is your foundation.

The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization that has been preserving digital content since 1996. It is funded by donations and has a mission to provide universal access to all knowledge. Content uploaded to the Internet Archive is preserved permanently and is accessible to anyone in the world including your descendants a hundred years from now.

Once you have an account you can upload photographs, documents, audio recordings, video files, and written text directly to your own collection. Everything you upload gets its own permanent URL that will not change or expire.

This is the most important step. Everything else builds on it.

Step Two: Start Uploading the Most Important Things First

Do not try to do everything at once. Start with the things that are most at risk of being lost.

The oldest photographs in your possession. The ones of family members who are no longer living. The ones where you might be the last person who knows whose faces are in the image.

Scan them with your phone using a free app like Microsoft Lens or Adobe Scan. Upload them to your Internet Archive collection. Label each one with the names of the people in it, the date if you know it, and the location.

Old documents are next. Birth certificates. Marriage certificates. Letters. Military records. Diplomas. Anything on paper that represents an important moment in a family history.

Step Three: Record Yourself

This is the step most people skip and it is one of the most valuable things you can do.

Open the voice memo app on your phone and record yourself talking for ten or fifteen minutes. Tell the story of how you grew up. Describe your parents. Talk about the neighborhood you lived in as a child. Tell a story you have told a hundred times before.

Do not worry about how you sound. Do not prepare a script. Just talk honestly. Future generations will treasure the sound of your voice talking about your own life far more than any polished production.

Upload the recording to your Internet Archive collection. Label it with your name and the date.

Then do it again next week. And the week after that. Over time you will build something extraordinary.

Step Four: Write It Down

You do not have to write a book. A few paragraphs a week adds up to something remarkable over months and years.

Write about what is happening in your life right now. Where you live. What you do. What the world looks like from where you stand in 2026. What you are worried about and what you hope for.

Create a free blog on Blogger at blogger.com, WordPress at wordpress.com, or any other free blogging platform. Write there regularly. Everything you publish is indexed by search engines, archived by the Wayback Machine, and accessible to anyone who goes looking for it.

You can also upload written documents directly to the Internet Archive alongside your photographs and recordings.

Step Five: Tell Your Family What You Are Building

The archive you are building is for them. Tell them it exists. Tell them where to find it. Show your children or grandchildren how to access it.

Invite other family members to contribute. Ask your parents or grandparents if they would let you help them record their own memories and add them to the archive. A family history archive built collaboratively across multiple generations is the most complete and durable version of this project.

What You Are Actually Building

Every photograph you upload with a name attached is a piece of your family that will not be lost. Every voice recording is a gift to people who will miss you. Every written account of your life is a primary historical document that future generations will be grateful existed.

The Irish monks we talked about in an earlier post copied ancient texts by hand in remote island monasteries because they understood that knowledge does not survive without effort. You have better tools than they did. You have the Internet Archive and a smartphone and a free afternoon.

The only question is whether you decide your life is worth preserving.

It is. Start today.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

The Polish Army Had an Actual Bear That Carried Artillery Shells and Held Military Rank

 In 1943 Polish soldiers stationed in Iran came across a young Syrian brown bear cub that had been found wandering alone after hunters had killed its mother.

They adopted him. They named him Wojtek.

Over the next two years Wojtek became one of the most remarkable animals in the history of any military.

How Wojtek Became a Soldier

The bear grew up with the soldiers of the Polish II Corps. He traveled with them, ate with them, and learned to mimic their behaviors. He enjoyed cigarettes, which soldiers gave him and which he learned to eat rather than smoke. He drank beer. He learned to carry heavy objects after watching the soldiers work.

When the Polish II Corps was assigned to the Allied campaign in Italy a bureaucratic problem arose. Military regulations did not permit animals on troop transport ships. The soldiers solved this in the most logical way they could think of. They officially enlisted Wojtek as a private in the Polish Army, giving him a name, a rank, and a service number.

Private Wojtek shipped to Italy with his unit.

What He Did at Monte Cassino

In May of 1944 the Allied forces launched their assault on the heavily fortified German position at Monte Cassino in central Italy. It was one of the most costly and difficult battles of the entire Italian campaign.

The Polish II Corps fought at Monte Cassino. And Wojtek worked.

Having watched soldiers carry ammunition and supply crates he understood what was expected of him. At Monte Cassino he carried artillery shells and supply crates to where they were needed. He worked alongside the soldiers he had lived with for years.

After Monte Cassino he was promoted to corporal.

What Happened After the War

When the war ended Wojtek went with the Polish soldiers to Scotland where the II Corps was demobilized. He spent the rest of his life at the Edinburgh Zoo where Polish veterans visited him regularly until his death in 1963.

A statue of Wojtek stands in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens. There is another in the Imperial War Museum's American Air Museum. There are others in Poland and in Canada where many Polish veterans settled after the war.

He was a real bear. He held a real military rank. He carried real ammunition in a real battle. And he is one of the most genuinely lovable figures in the history of any conflict.

In a war defined by enormous suffering and industrial scale destruction, Wojtek the ammunition-carrying corporal bear is one of the stories that reminds you that history is also made of small, strange, and sometimes wonderful things.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.