Who am I?

I wasn't too welcome on being born, for my brother who was two years older than me found that I was getting all the good things he once had so he planned a war of revenge on this wiling bundle currently clinging to him and my mother and gorging myself on gallons of her milk!

I couldn't do much as he did, such as running around the house and garden. I just crawled around the floor, under tables and chairs bumping my head against dog, walls and doors without the ability to open them as I couldn't yet stand to reach the door handle.

However all that changed when my legs finally stood up and I could totter around making a mess of everything that crossed my path. One day my brother was sitting at the table playing with toys or using pencil or crayons to draw things with of which I knew nothing,

I was keen though and tried to sit at the table with him.He helped by getting me to climb on a chair  then let me sit on the table to see what he was doing. He seem quite pleased so just for fun he took all the chairs away and decided to leave me there.

Needless to say I wanted to follow him so I slipped off the table and fell on the floor and started wailing out loud. It was then that mother rushed in and found this screaming child. Her elder son however was oblivious to the event (so he said).

What a great example in life was installed in me all those years ago...trust no-one! Mind you this never happened again but I realized that life is not easy. However I was now alert to the dangers of life.

So when I too married and became a father, I made sure that I would spend as much time as possible to be with my children and ensure that they found life adventurous and fun...but not sitting on the table.

Image found at www.pixabay.com

I made up stories

I knew nothing of literacy before I went to school
I didn't need to as I could cry, gurgle and drool
My parents got fed up with that, they thought I played the fool

First day Ma took me I didn't like it one bit
Next morning refused to go, stayed with Gran, I seemed to fit
Thereafter to school I went, was no way out of it

So then I learned to read and write to Mum and Dad's delight
Despite the war, quickly learned the ABC and was alright
When it was over we moved house, now was easy to write

I made up stories from the start, got good marks that pleased all
And made eyes with girl from my class, she liked me I was tall
Lucky was accepted to local Grammar school that fall

Not only that my mother worked in Library part time
So gorged myself on grown up books that was no crime
Pullitzer prize authors, classics and more as a pastime

Was glad too I did write a few essays that did not suck
My marks were average but exceeded at sport what luck
Then got offer as a draftsman so able to earn a buck

A few years passed and found that my wife was fun
Had won award for essay when at school and quite young
Both joined a writing club, read our stories with own tongue

Later married daughter told me of blogging site
Where I could write stories which was such fun alright
So tapped the keyboard several days at night

But found story telling blogs became fewer and fewer
So had to find the sites where poetry was the bidder
So pleased now that PU is my literary rescuer


Image found at www.freepik.com/free-photo/teen-boy-reading-quiet-library_2667043.htm

Maria Sklodowska

                              Marie Curie and her daughters Eve and Irene


Youngest of five children Maria Sklodowska was born in Poland in 1867. With both parents as teachers she excelled at school and despite her mother dying early when Maria was only eleven years old she continued in her studies. In those days University education was only available for men in her country so she and her sister who was also talented worked out a plan whereby Maria would work as a tutor/governess while her sister Bronya studied abroad and then Maria could do likewise.

When her turn came Maria chose to enroll at the Sorbonne University in Paris despite having barely enough money to support herself. She achieved a masters degree in Physics in 1893 and was commissioned to study the magnetic properties of steel. As she had no laboratory of her own she shared one with a physicist Pierre Curie another graduate of the Sorbonne. Presumably she amended her name to Marie in France

Her studies with other scientists work soon had her conducting experiments on the element Uranium and its properties. The rays emitted from it being weaker than the X-rays found by Roentgen. She herself coined the word radioactivity to explain them. Her discovery then set up a field of study called Atomic Physics. 

She and Pierre were married in 1895. Despite Marie becoming a mother to a daughter Irene in 1897 she continued her studies and Pierre joined her in her work and both later discovered a new radioactive element named Polonium; this name recognized the country of her birth; Poland. Radium was also discovered by them from the substance Pitchblende which was a previously unknown element.

Henri Becquerel together with Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. The award allowed them to continue their research. Despite this Marie still managed to have another child, Eve in 1904. 

Sadly Pierre was killed in a street accident in 1906 but Marie took over his teaching work at the Sorbonne becoming the first female professor there. She again won the Nobel prize in her own right for Chemistry this time in 1911.

When the Great War 1914-1918 broke out she encouraged the use of portable X-ray machines in the field which were nicknamed "Little Curies". The deleterious effect of X-rays on humans was not well known and it was said she often had test tubes of radium in her lab coat!

She progressively became more unwell in the early nineteen-thirties with aplastic anemia probably caused by radiation and died in a sanatorium in Passy, France in July 1934.

Her daughter Irene also became a Nobel Laureate for her own work in Chemistry in 1935 sharing it with her husband Frederic Joliot.

Image found at www.en.wikipedia.org
This is my precis of an article found at http://www.biography.com/people/marie-curie-9263538