Marie Curie's research notebooks are still so dangerously radioactive over a century later that anyone wishing to view them in the French national library must sign a liability waiver and wear protective clothing.

A closer look

Marie Curie's research notebooks are still so dangerously radioactive over a century later that anyone wishing to view them in the French national library must sign a liability waiver and wear protective clothing. The pioneering physicist kept glowing vials of radium in her pockets and her desk drawers like they were completely harmless desk ornaments, fundamentally misunderstanding the horrifying nature of the elements she discovered. It is the ultimate tragic irony that her brilliant dedication to science resulted in her possessions becoming toxic hazards for the next fifteen hundred years. She literally left a legacy so radiant that modern historians risk cellular mutation just to read her grocery lists!