26 December: Radium

On this date in 1898 Marie and Pierre Curie announced that they had discovered radium. Here are 10 things you might not know about this element.

1. The chemical symbol for radium is Ra and its atomic number is 88.
2. Its melting point is 700 °C/1292 °F, and its boiling point is 1737 °C/3159 °F.
3. It was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. They didn't, at first, isolate pure radium but extracted radium chloride from uraninite. It wasn't until 1911 that Marie Curie, with André-Louis Debierne, managed to isolate it using electrolysis.
4. The substance is named after its property of emitting radiation. The word radium derives from the Latin word "radius" meaning "ray".
5. Pure radium is silvery-white, but when exposed to air, it quickly turns Black. It is, in fact, reacting with nitrogen rather than Oxygen.
6. Only tiny amounts are found in nature. There is a little as a seventh of a gram in a ton of uranite.
7. Radium is the heaviest known alkaline earth metal. Other alkali earth metals include beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.
8. It has 33 isotopes, the most stable of which is radium-226 with a half-life of 1602 years. This means any radium that was present when the Earth was formed will have decayed long ago. Eventually, radium decays into Lead.
9. It is not necessary for biological organisms, in fact, it's very bad for them. If ingested, the body treats it as calcium, so it accumulates in the bones and can cause bone cancer. Before science realised this, it was used to make luminous paint for the faces of watches and instrument dials. The women who painted the dials were actively encouraged to lick their brushes to shape them. This led to a famous lawsuit in the 1920s when five women dying from the effects of ingesting radium sued the United States Radium Corporation, who tried to wriggle out of it by saying the women had syphilis. Radium was once an additive in products such as Toothpaste, hair creams, and even in food items and was sold as having curative powers.
10. Even though it causes cancer, it has been used as a cure for the disease. Howard Atwood Kelly was a pioneer of radiotherapy, targetting tumours with it. It was a risky business - some of his patients died from radiation exposure. Radiotherapy is still used to treat cancer, but nowadays, safer radioisotopes are used instead.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

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