Bearium was accidently discovered by French Madame, Marie Curie. Like all proper women she was working in her kitchen at the time. When she knocked over a beaker of crystalized bearium sulfate, which she used to clean her husband's clothes. The crystals fell on the stove, where she was cooking her husband's dinner. Cute but naive attempts to stamp out the flames with the iron she used to press her husband's shirts created an electrolysis reaction and formula only a man could understand: Isolation (* follow): (cathode) Ba2+* + 2e- → Ba (anode) Cl-* → ½Cl2 (g) + e-