Is 144 today, or would be had she lived beyond her 67 fruitful years.
To stand on the pavement outside her birthplace in Warsaw in 2006 engendered unexpected dismay. Dismay because I never knew she was Polish, I was never told about her extraordinary life and I should have been. To be ahead of your time, emancipated, independent and uncorrupted by fame are characteristics worth passing on.
There are heroes everywhere, all nations have them as well as their share of villains but it would have really helped my sense of identity had I a few heroes like her in my back pocket where I was growing up. So this here is a birthday gift for Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie. I hope she would forgive the militaristic nature of the heroism portrayed here but her end of life in 1934 meant she didn't have to see what was coming.
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