Marie Curie's notebooks are still radioactive.

1898

They are kept in lead-lined boxes at the National Library of France, and readers must sign a waiver and wear protective gear. Radium-226 takes 1,600 years to lose half its activity.

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The event

• First Nobel Prizes1901 · Stockholm. On 10 December 1901, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace were awarded for the first time under his will. The Nobel Prize became the most prestigious award in science and culture.

19th century

More amazing facts

• 1896 There were no gold medals at the first modern Olympics in 1896.
• 1897 · 1898 Heroin was once sold as a cough medicine.
• 1897 In 1897 the state of Indiana nearly passed a law on the value of pi. The House voted unanimously for a bill implying pi = 3.2; it was halted in the Senate because a mathematics professor happened to be in town.
• 1898 Two lions brought a British railway in Kenya to a halt.
• 1899 The first car to break 100 km/h was electric: in 1899 Belgian driver Camille Jenatzy hit almost 106 km/h near Paris in the torpedo-shaped La Jamais Contente, 'The Never Satisfied'.
• 1899 The head of the US Patent Office never said 'everything that can be invented has been invented'. The line is pinned on Charles Duell in 1899, but there is no evidence for it, and his reports in fact looked forward to new inventions.

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