Added 1 new A* page:You may recall that a year ago, at the bottom of a really long news article, I talked about the "Radium Girls," who were factory workers who painted the glowing marks on wrist watches in the 20's--the paint achieving its glow on account of it containing the radioactive element radium, which is not something you want around you or on your skin or in your mouth, which is where the workers were encouraged to put it, using their lips to keep their brush points sharp. Well although in some quarters it was known that radiation wasn't happy fun times, radium was in use in various consumer products as late as the 60's, and a new Atlantic article entitled We Used to Put Radium in Coffee tells us about some of the other things it was put in, like chocolate, toy "radiumscopes," toothpaste, and cosmetics. Yes, thousands (millions?) put some "zip" in their day with doses of "invigorating" radium--though we can *hope* that most of those products were fakes that had no actual radium in them! :o
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Detail from the pencils for today's page--I take these photos when the pencils come out pretty good and I suspect I may screw them up with ink :P--although I seemed to manage all right today:
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