I was working my way toward polonium, which was named in honor of Poland, the native country of the brilliant Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, who discovered the stuff in 1898. Polonium is a quarter of a million times more poisonous than cyanide, and ought to be studied at a distance, although I keep a small sample of the stuff in a lead-lined box as a sentimental relic. Madame Curie had sent it to Uncle Tar as a memento of their rich correspondence, and in the end outlived him by several years. It looked like nothing so much as a slab of seaside toffee.
