the.com/polonium
the element so deadly a speck can kill, named for love of a country
means A rare, intensely radioactive metallic element (symbol Po, atomic number 84), so dangerously toxic that microscopic amounts can be lethal.
from Discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie as they sifted radioactivity out of uranium ore. Marie — Polish by birth, then living and working in France — named it after Poland (Latin 'Polonia'), her partitioned homeland which at the time existed on no map. It was a quiet act of patriotism smuggled into the periodic table: a country erased by empires, immortalized in an element.
- discovery
- Found by Marie Curie, named for Poland
- lethality
- A microgram inhaled can prove fatal
- assassin's tool
- Killed ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006
- glows
- Radioactivity makes it shine faintly blue
- scarcity
- Earth holds only grams of it naturally
polonium-210 — isotope used in 2006 assassination of alexander litvinenko in london
marie curie's element — discovered 1898 in pitchblende ore, named after her native poland