50 Years Ago

An investigation during 1954–56, into hygiene in restaurants and public houses, was then described... In the first survey covering fifty representative kitchens only twenty-seven out of 260 washed utensils examined attained the United States Public Health Standard. Only two from forty-two drying cloths showed less than 500 organisms per square inch. Only seven from forty-two wash and rinse waters yielded less than 500 organisms per ml. 74 per cent of kitchens yielded fæcal Bacterium coli from one or more items but no recognized types of food-poisoning pathogens were isolated apart from Staphylococcus aureus... Arrangements in many kitchens were poor, the paramount need being for improved ventilation and more hot water at 180° F.

From Nature 8 June 1957

100 Years Ago

The Origin of Radium by E. Rutherford — In a previous letter to Nature (January 17) I gave an account of some experiments which I had made upon the growth of radium in preparations of actinium. ...I think we may [now] safely conclude that, in the ordinary commercial preparations of actinium, there exists a new substance which is slowly transformed into radium. This intermediate parent of radium is chemically quite distinct from actinium and radium and their known products, and is capable of separation from them.

It is not possible at present to decide definitely whether this parent substance is a final product of the transformation of actinium or not. It is not improbable that it may prove to be the long-looked-for intermediate product of slow transformation between uranium X and radium, but with no direct radio-active connection with actinium. If this be the case, the position of actinium in the radio-active series still remains unsettled.

From Nature 7 June 1907