Radium Girls: Unveiling the dark secrets behind Oppenheimer and its unexpected link to radioactive elements

Oppenheimer happens to be one of the most historic films of Hollywood. Christopher Nolan’s biographical thriller is based on Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin.

It centres around the life of the acclaimed American theoretical physicist, also known as the father of the atomic bomb. It also covers the events that contributed to the formation of the Manhattan Project. For those who don’t know, it was a US government program, to secretly build and test an atomic bomb.

Now, a video which has surfaced on social media claims that the watch that Cillian Murphy wore in the film is not the usual. It is one of a kind. Yes, it is a radioactive watch. Not just Cillian but Emily Blunt (Kitty Oppenheimer), and Matt Damon (Lieutenant General Leslie Groves Jr.) also wore the same kind of watches. These objects feature ‘luminous paint’ so that it can be easily read in the dark. This glow comes from the radioactive element called radium.

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According to reports, Nolan worked with Hamilton is getting these watches and it is not their first collaboration. The watches used in Tenet and Interstellar were also conceived specifically from Hamilton. US Radium Corporation after the first World War hired ‘Radium Girls’. These women worked on radium watches as they painted these dials. In a bid to sharpen brushes, they used their tongues, swallowing a bit of radium every day.

Mose of these radium girls suffered from horrible deaths before they were even 30. By 1927, the radium girls came together to sue the US Radium Corporation

The video further claimed that many ladies were killed while painting the dial of these watches and it was banned in 1968.

Meanwhile, an image that earlier surfaced on social media showed a man reading about ‘Oppenheimer’ while sitting in the theatre during the intermission. “i’m still laughing thinking about this,” wrote the uploader as he posted an image of the man sneakily glued to his phone. In the image, it seems like the man has opened Oppenheimer’s Wikipedia page and is gathering some context to understand the movie better.