Dr. Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen's book, "Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything" (Workman Publishing), explores the history of charlatans and snake oil salesmen taking ...

The young women sat in rows, heads bent, painting numbers on paper watch and clock faces with luminous paint. The numbers on the wristwatches and clock dials were so tiny, the workers needed a very ...

Two movies about irradiated women in one year? Sure, why not. Radium Girls — now on Netflix — follows slightly on the heels of Amazon’s Radioactive, a bio of Marie Curie, the groundbreaking scientist ...

Sometimes the glow of history reveals dark corners previously unknown. That’s certainly the case with the countless young women who suffered radiation poisoning after painting the dials of watches ...

In 1888, the match girls of London went on strike. Their reason was a particularly horrifying working condition: ingesting phosphorus. A girl with "phossy jaw" would literally glow in the dark as her ...

Editor's note, Jan. 15, 2015: Mae Keane was one of the last "radium girls," but not the last one. Please scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the full correction note. Before turning the page ...

Some of the fascinating things we did with the radioactive element, including using it as a "wonderful" nightlight, since it "glows with a weird light in a dark room." Radium was discovered by Marie ...

In our quest for health and longevity, we’re always looking for surefire shortcuts and miracle cures — whether through rigorously tested science or the fast-and-loose recommendations of an alternative ...