Day 68: As you might guess from the 25-cent price tag, these ornaments date back a few years. In fact, they're almost as old as I am, and come from an era when nuclear power was envisioned as the solution to all the world's energy problems. Radiation was very poorly understood, and radium was used in a wide variety of household applications ranging from glow-in-the-dark watch faces to Christmas ornaments such as the icicles shown here. Interestingly, the amount of glow emitted by the icicles has changed very little over more than half a century, and in an even stranger turn of events, the plastic snowflakes which were NOT "glow-in-the-dark" but were stored in the same box seem to have picked up traces of radiation. When the room is entirely darkened, their shapes can be made out on the tree, faintly apparent but nevertheless glowing. Oh, for a Geiger counter!
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