9 Deadly Fashion Trends That Actually Killed People

5. "Health Restoring" Radium

Radium, first isolated by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, is a naturally occurring radioactive element that we know can cause all kinds of health problems. At least, we know that now. Shortly after its discovery, radium was all the rage, and people thought that it's eerie radioactive glow was evidence for its "energising" qualities.

It was put in everything from fabric to health tonics to suppositories (that's the thing you stick up your butt), but it was its use in the watchmaking industry that revealed the horrors of radiation. During World War 1, it was used to illuminate watch faces without compromising blackout, but this meant that those watches had to be painted by hand.

The women that painted them would lick the tips of their paintbrushes, ingesting radium in such high quantities that they were soon exhaling radon and glowing in the dark.When one of them died (of radiation sickness), her bones were found to be so radioactive that they left marks on photographic film.