The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint. Painting was done by women at three different sites in the United States, and the term now applies to the women working at the facilities: the first, a United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; the facility at Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and a third facility in Waterbury, Connecticut. The women in each facility had been told the paint was harmless, and subsequently ingested deadly amounts of radium after bein...

The al-Assad family (Arabic: عَائِلَة الْأَسَد‎ ʿāʾilah al-ʾAsad) has ruled Syria since Hafez al-Assad became President of Syria in 1971 and established an authoritarian government under the control of the Ba'ath Party. After his death in 2000, his son Bashar succeeded him.The Assads are originally from Qardaha, just east of Latakia in north-west Syria. They are members of the minority Alawite sect and belong to the Kalbiyya tribe. The family name Assad goes back to 1927, when Ali Sulayman (1875–1963) changed his last name to al-Assad, Arabic for "the lion", possibly in connection with his social...