Nuclear reactions aren’t as mysterious to science today as they were back in the 1940’s. Louis Slotin experimented in the laboratory with his bare hands discovering the fickle state of the little known science with fatal consequences.

In fact, that’s what Louis Slotin was doing, slowly lowering the top half of a neutron-reflecting shell over a sphere of fissile plutonium. Today, nobody would attempt that experiment except from a safe distance. Slotin, however, was using his bare hands to hold the shell, and had a screwdriver propped in there to keep the two halves from touching.

Slotin’s accident occurred when the two halves touched. He quickly pulled them apart but unfortunately he died soon thereafter from radioactive effect.