An Australian man is accused of breaking his country’s nuclear non-proliferation laws for ordering a sample of plutonium online in a bid to collect all the elements in the periodic table. In August of 2023, 24-year-old Emmanuel Lidden was arrested at his parents’ house in Sidney, Australia, during a major operation that involved Australian Border Force officials, firefighters, police, and paramedics. He pleaded guilty to breaching nuclear non-proliferation laws by shipping plutonium into the country, a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years, but his lawyer is arguing that Lidden is not some maniac or mad scientist with a nefarious agenda, but rather a “science nerd” who had made it his goal to collect all the elements in the periodic table, even radioactive ones. Read More »

It’s hard to believe, but there was once a time when the rich and powerful spent small fortunes on radium-infused distilled water advertised as a cure for a variety of illnesses. Knowing what we know now about radioactive elements and their effects on the human body, most of us wouldn’t dare touch, let alone drink, a bottle of radium-containing water, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, the so-called “remedy” was all the rage among wealthy socialites. Radithor and other radioactive elixirs were sold as harmless remedies that could combat fatigue, and cure all sorts of conditions, from cancers to impotence. Unfortunately, in reality, they slowly killed the very people they were supposed to heal. Read More »