PEOPLE HAD A WEIRD relationship with radioactivity in the early 20th century. It wasn’t common knowledge yet that it was dangerous, so there were all kinds of radioactive products available. ☢️ For decades, that list even included toothpaste! Beginning in the 1920s, German company Auergesellschaft made Doramad, a toothpaste containing radioactive thorium, which they advertised as being great for polishing enamel and fighting gum disease. In Paris, there was an entire line of cosmetics (toothpaste included) called Tho-Radia. Companies like those are probably also how “Operation Toothpaste” came about in WWII. An Allied team was trying to discover whether the Germans were getting close to making nuclear weapons. 💥 They followed a trail of smuggled thorium from France to Germany, where they realized that the radioactive material wasn’t being stockpiled for weapons, but to make toothpaste after the war ended! In the United States in the 1920s, a dentist was able to trace the pattern of...