DAILY DIRT: Part of Jimmy Carter’s legacy will be the time he had radioactive urine

Daily Dirt for Monday, July 7, 2025

There was much more to Carter’s life than being a president and peanut farmer … Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 1,335 of The Daily Dirt.

1. There’s one account of former President Jimmy Carter’s life that rarely gets showcased.

“There are many remarkable facets to the life of Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States, but the fact that he once had measurable levels of radioactive urine has to be near the top of the list,” reported Jake Rossen, a senior staff writer for mentalfloss.com, in 2021. 

Rossen wrote that in 1952 Carter was in the Navy and had been trained to work in the government’s atomic energy program. As part of his duties, he was instructed to lower himself into a Canadian nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. The reactor, which had been damaged, needed to be cleaned up, and Carter was part of a team dispatched to get the job done.

Carter, who later became as well known for being a peanut farmer as he was president, got a dose of radiation that would be unimaginable today, but at that time there were still many dots that needed connected in nuclear studies.

“We were fairly well instructed then on what nuclear power was, but for about six months after that I had radioactivity in my urine,” Carter, who died at age 100 in December 2024, told author Arthur Milnes in 2008. “They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages and they didn’t know.”

The experience was thought to have shaped Carter’s views on nuclear warfare while in office: His approach was a conservative one. He also made sure his vice president, Walter Mondale, was fully informed on nuclear protocols in case he had to relinquish his presidential duties.

Aside from the radioactive urine, it’s not known whether Carter suffered any (other) lasting effects from the exposure. 

2. Did you know (Part 418)

• That Hawaii is moving toward Japan approximately four inches a year, which means they will conjoin about 62 million years.
• That the first MLB player to have a hyphenated surname was Australia’s Ryan Rowland-Smith, who debuted on June 22, 2007.
• That Michael Jackson was 25 years, 4 months and 29 days old when his hair caught on fire in 1984 while filming a Pepsi commercial. He died exactly 25 years, 4 months and 29 days later.
• That India is home to the world’s only two vegetarian McDonald’s in the world.
• That New York City’s Central Park is larger than the country of Monaco. In fact, much larger: Central Park 843 acres, Monaco 514 acres.

3. Here are some more senior citizen texting codes to add to our growing collection:

• TL: Talk louder.
• FWIW: Forgot where I was.
• BTW: Bring the wheelchair.
• LMDO: Laughing my dentures out.
• BFF: Best friend fell.
• GHA: Got heartburn again.
• BYOT: Bring your own teeth.

Steve Thought O’ The Day — The only number that has all of its letters in alphabetical order is forty. You’re welcome.

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. He would never set foot in a vegetarian McDonald’s.