What is radium used for?

Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for nuclear panels, watches, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. More than 100 former watch dial painters who used their lips to shape the paintbrush died from the radiation from the radium that had become kept in their bones. Soon afterward, the adverse effects of radioactivity became widely known. Radium was still used in dials as late as the 1950s. Although tritium's beta radiation is potentially dangerous if ingested, it has changed radium in these applications.