From its discovery in 1898, radium was considered a wonder of science. It glowed with an unearthly beauty. It delighted its discoverers, Marie Sklodowska Curie and her husband Pierre, who called it “My beautiful radium”. It was used in spas and clinics as a cure for everything from cancer to constipation. It was used in […]
Category: Americas
Huixtocihuatl- Goddess of Salt
Salt has been a source of wealth since ancient times. The human body must have some form of salt to survive and before the advent of refrigeration it was one of the main ways to preserve food. Salt was associated with sex and fertility as well for some reason, which has proved fodder for psychoanalysts. […]
The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811
New Madrid, Missouri was at the back end of nowhere. It was technically a respectably sized town on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Natchez, but this was not a great achievement. In 1811, the population was about 1,000 people made up of farmers, fur traders and pioneers supplemented by French Creoles and Native […]
The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635
Hurricanes are a part of life if you live on the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf Coast of the US or the Caribbean. What we tend to forget is these powerful storms have been around longer than the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. We discussed a few such hurricane in our posts about the 1900 Galveston Storm […]
The Valiant Ladies of Potosí
When the Spanish “discovered” South America, they were thrilled to find a plethora of precious metals to take. The heart of the silver boom was the town of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia. At the time it was part of the Viceroyalty of Peru and was known as Alto Peru. There was so much […]