Both Goudsmit and Pash wrote books about their Alsos mission to find out about the German atomic bomb program. Goudsmit opens his book with a drawing of the German experimental station for atomic bomb research - a house-sized wooden building.[1] The US's Manhattan Project involved building as much plant as the prewar auto industry. The US intelligence people knew there was a German atomic program, but couldn't find out anything about it, so they assumed it must have really good secrecy. Goudsmit mentions that the V-2 rocket project made no sense unless it could carry an atomic bomb - accuracy was so bad that it couldn't hit a target smaller than Greater London, and it cost as much as a fighter plane.
Here's one where I think we very recently passed through the inflection point of cringe-worthiness: putting tiny plastic beads into body wash and facial scrubs in order to exfoliate your skin better.
It's high on my list! If you liked that book I have a suspicion you'd also like Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind[1], in case you haven't read it already.
Whenever I buy toothpaste for sensitive teeth I always do a doubletake when I see strontium listed as in ingredient. I have to think for half a second is that right? Its name alone I guess is what makes me think that but I guess I am confusing it with other nasty radioactive elements.
Natural occurring strontium is harmless and not radioactive. It fine to have it in toothpaste.
The reason you often hear about is strontium as something radioactive is because of Strontium-90, which is one of the longer lived products of nuclear fission, with 30 year half-life. Thus radioactive strontium-90 is always present after a nuclear accident or explosion.
No, it was just a tiny program.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=3v2ttYJ_d2kC&pg=PA2