The X-ray files

X-ray of Momma's teeth.

I know some of you laughed at me in July when I commented on Momma's new-fangled X-ray - but they really are!

On Nov. 8, 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength now known as Röntgen rays.

Or, more commonly, X-rays.

(Röntgen himself preferred the term X-rays.)

That achievement earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

Röntgen's wife's hand.

Nearly two weeks later, he took the very first picture of his wife Anna Bertha's hand using X-rays.

She allegedly exclaimed, "I have seen my death!" when she saw her skeleton.

Röntgen died of cancer on Feb. 10, 1923. Some speculated it was due to his pioneering work in X-rays, but he one of the few who routinely used protective lead aprons at the time.