- In Issaquah’s rough-cut formative years, saloons outnumbered hotels and churches. Workers’ hard-earned wages went to whiskey and the town had a reputation. And over time, with increased ordinances, the rise of the temperance movement, and Prohibition taking effect, the town was forced to evolve… but they didn’t give up the “drink.”
- Polonium (Wikipedia)
Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character resembles that of its horizontal neighbors in the periodic table: thallium, lead, and bismuth. Due to the short half-life of all its isotopes, its natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium-210 (with a half-life of 138 days) in uranium ores, as it is the penultimate daughter of natural uranium-238. Though longer-lived isotopes exist, such as the 124 years half-life of polonium-209, they are much more difficult to produce. Today, polonium is usually produced in milligram quantities by the neutron irradiation of bismuth. Due to its intense radioactivity, which results in the radiolysis of chemical bonds and radioactive self-heating, its chemistry has mostly been investigated on the trace scale only.