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Historic Ideas That Aged Like Complete Garbage

Khalid Elhassan July 11, 2020 35 min

Madame Nhu - South Vietnam — Protests in Saigon. People's World

37. X-Ray Shoe Fitters Bathed Everybody in the Vicinity With Dangerous Radiation

A typical X-Ray Shoe Fitter viewing lasted about 20 seconds, during which the machine delivered about half the radiation of a chest CT scan. Many customers tried on more than one pair of shoes, and thus ended up getting exposed to additional X-ray doses with each pair. Even people sitting in the waiting room got exposed to radiation.

Many shoe stores did not think that saving money by skimping on machine maintenance was a bad idea. As a result, many X-Ray Shoe Fitters emitted significantly more radiation. Some devices blasted out as much as 300 times more radiation than the maximum safe limit. Most exposed were the shoe salespeople: they got hit with stray radiation dozens of times a day, each and every day they went to work.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.