From Today I Found Out.

If ever there was a living embodiment of the Roaring 20s, it was Eben Byers. The scion of a New York steelmaking fortune, Byers indulged in every hobby and luxury his wealth and social status allowed. He kept luxury homes across the United States, collected fine art, owned stables of racehorses, held titles in trap shooting, and even won the national amateur golf championship in 1906. He was also an infamous ladies’ man, earning the nickname “Foxy Grandpa” from his classmates at Yale University. But in October 1930, this charmed life came to an abrupt end when Byers began losing weight and suffering excruciating headaches. Then, his teeth began falling out. Two years later, Byers would die horribly disfigured, his bones literally disintegrating from the inside out. The culprit was a popular tonic laced with the radioactive element Radium, which Byers consumed daily for nearly two years. Byers’ gruesome death sparked a nationwide scandal, and brought to a close the early 20th Century’s bizarre mania for all things radioactive.

Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila