Texas Uranium Corp. - Mining Stock Certificate

Uranium minerals were noticed by miners for a long time prior to the discovery of uranium in 1789. The uranium mineral pitchblende, later known as uraninite, was reported from the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), Saxony, as early as 1565. Other early reports of pitchblende date from 1727 in Jáchymov and 1763 in Schwarzwald. The suffix "-blende" was applied by Ore Mountain miners to minerals that looked like they contained some usable metal but (according to then available knowledge) didn't. The term derived from superstitions that a "mountain gnome" had somehow "hexed" the minerals to trick the miners (c.f. The German use of the term "blenden" cognate of "blind" for "tricking"). Thus examining old documents about the presence of "worthless" -blende type minerals allowed easier exploration once uranium had been discovered.

In the early 19th century, uranium ore was recovered as a byproduct of mining in Saxony, Bohemia, and Cornwall. The first deliberate mining of radioactive ores took place in Joachimsthal, a silver-mining city now in the Czech Republic. Marie Skłodowska-Curie used pitchblende ore from Joachimsthal to isolate the element radium, a decay product of uranium. Until World War II, uranium was mined primarily for its radium content; some carnotite deposits were mined primarily for the vanadium content. Sources for radium, contained in the uranium ore, were sought for use as luminous paint for watch dials and other applications. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining

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