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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
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Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
When Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium in 1898, the market instantly became infatuated with the new element. Radium was used in everything from medicine to cocktails, providing useful medical benefits and luminous qualities that were used in consumer products. However, the dangers of radiation exposure were not fully understood at the time. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| 1898 | Radium is discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie in France. |
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| 1904 | Radium is used in paint, cocktails, and other objects to make them glow. |
| 1913 | Radium is reported as an effective treatment in reducing the size of malignant growths. |
| 1918 | Due to high demand, many are worried about a shortage of radium. |
| 1919 | Radium is used in beauty products and makeup. |
