BOC#013 Box of Chocolates

Strange But True: Radium Medication, Blue People, and the Eiffel Tower

Mar 31, 2025

3 MINUTE MUNCH

RADIUM, DISCOVERED BY MARIE CURIE IN 1898

…was once thought beneficial. It was discovered that radium, a calcium mimicking isotope, accumulated in the bones, and so it was generously added to medications including an over the counter pain killer called Radithor, which turned out to be devastating. Marketed as a tonic, a wealthy industrialist named Eben B. Byers treated it as such and drank a bottle a day for three years. To his dismay, he discovered that his jaw was dissolving, eventually losing most of his jaw and parts of his skull before dying in 1932. Google search him at your own risk!

IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES IN THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS OF KENTUCKY…

…a french immigrant by the name of Martin Fugate married Elizabeth Smith who gave birth to seven children, four of who were blue! With no other abnormalities, the children were indigo from head to toe. With a small gene pool and interbreeding between a small number of families in the area, blue family members just kept coming. 140 years later, and with blue tinted people still resident, Dr Madison Cawein, a hematologist at the University of Kentucky took it upon himself to investigate this strange encounter. Cawein explored the possibility of a rare blood disorder called methemoglobinemia which is caused by a high level of methemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen less efficiently than hemoglobin. Both Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith turned out to have the same rare recessive gene. While most people have less than 1% methemoglobin in their blood, the blue offspring were found to have had 10-20%. Cawein injected his subjects with a blue dye which balanced the methaemoglobin, turning them back to a more pink complexion.

HOW DOES A PETROL PUMP KNOW WHEN YOU’RE DONE?

As you fill your tank, a hole at the end of the nozzle sucks in air. As the fuel fills and eventually covers the hole, airflow is stifled as a vacuum is created. A valve is then triggered by the change in pressure, which in turn stops fuel flow. Now you know!

“THE DECENT METHOD YOU FOLLOW…

… is better than the perfect method you quit.” - Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour Body.*

BOOK PASSAGE: OUT OF YOUR MIND BY ALAN WATTS*

On the importance of discussion and debate:

“I’m a philosopher. If you don’t argue with me, I don’t know what to think. So if we argue, I have to say “thank you,” because owing to the courtesy of your taking a different point of view, I understand what I think and mean. So I can’t get rid of you.”

ON THIS DAY: 31st MARCH

Celebrating 100 years since the start of the French Revolution, on this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was opened. Built over two years by Gustave Eiffel, the tower was designed to mark the entrance to the Exposition Universelle, a festival celebrating the Storming of the Bastille in 1789. The structure was intended to show ‘not only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we are living’ said Gustave Eiffel. At the time of building, it was the tallest building on earth.