May 20, 1921 – The President of the United States presents Marie Curie with a gram of radium

In 1920, an American journalist named Marie Mattingly ‘Missy’ Meloney interviewed Marie Curie in Paris. Upon learning that Curie’s laboratory was short of funds and that they had only one gram of radium available for research (which, moreover, belonged to her), Missy was horrified.

On her return to the US, she rallied thousands of American women and launched a national fundraising campaign: the Marie Curie Radium Fund. They raised the money and, on 20 May 1921, President Warren G. Harding presented Marie Curie with the key to a mahogany chest containing that priceless gram of radium at the White House.

If you’d like to find out more about this scientist, click on the link below: Marie Curie