Pierre Curie wrote the letters Po for polonium in the laboratory log, a name given in honor of Marie’s beloved homeland, Poland. However, the element was still linked to bismuth and barium in plechbenda, a uranium mineral, in which they would eventually find radium in 1902, but only by starting with enormous quantities (10 tons) of plechbenda. Marie and Pierre Curie thus identified an element 300 times more radioactive than uranium, an element that would be used by the Soviets on two Lunokhods on the Moon (a third also worked at Chernobyl), and, alas, also for other less noble uses by the Soviet and then Russian KGB.
