Radium seventh of a gram of radium. One kilogram of the Earth's crust contains about 900 picograms of radium, and one liter of sea water contains about 89 femtograms of radium. Radium was discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on 21 December 1898, in a uraninite (pitchblende) sample. While studying the mineral earlier, the Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material was still radioactive. They separated out an element similar to bismuth from pitchblende in July 1898, that turned out to be polonium. They then separated out a radioactive mixture consisting mostly of two
Radium King Radium King The Radium King was built in 1937 to haul ore on the Mackenzie River, and her tributaries. This included uranium used in the US atom bombs of World War II. Later in her active career she hauled barges on Great Slave Lake. The "Radium King", and a sister ship, the "Radium Queen", were built in the Manseau shipyards in Montreal. They were then disassembled and the pieces were loaded on flatcars for shipment by railroad to Waterways, Alberta, which was then the northern terminus of the North American railway grid, to be reassembled and launched on the Mackenzie