A woman requested a Mariah Carey cake… Well this is what she got!

My cousin in England told her colleagues she wanted a Mariah Carey birthday cake. They misunderstood, and is the cake they made her instead. It’s Marie Curie, looking very festive. pic.twitter.com/LMHJnMATqD

— Harriet Alida Lye (@harrietalida) June 14, 2019

Mariah Carey is a musically gifted global superstar.

Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium and was the first female winner of a Nobel prize.

Aside from sharing initials and carrying two X chromosomes, there’s not a lot these two ladies have in common – which made for an amusing case of mistaken identities when a fan of the singer asked for a Mariah Carey cake for her birthday.

Her colleagues respectively obliged. Only there must have been a small misunderstanding because when the big day came around, they brought out a cake of the famed scientist Marie Curie and not pop sensation Mariah Carey. (But it’s the thought that counts, right?)

My cousin in England told her colleagues she wanted a Mariah Carey birthday cake. They misunderstood, and is the cake they made her instead. It’s Marie Curie, looking very festive. pic.twitter.com/LMHJnMATqD

— Harriet Alida Lye (@harrietalida) June 14, 2019

Marie Curie (full name: Marie Skłodowska-Curie) was a physicist and chemist who fought against gender norms of the time to become the world’s first female winner of the Nobel prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity. 

To get an education as a woman, Curie (born Maria Salomea Skłodowska) had to leave her home country of Poland and move to Paris, where she got a place at the Sorbonne after signing her name “Marie” to sound more French. She came out top of her class and went on to earn a master’s degree in physics and a second degree in mathematics. In 1903, she became the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate in physics.

Curie is most famed for her work on radioactivity, which earned her two Nobel prizes (the second awarded to her in 1911) despite objections from the nominating committee. They questioned her suitability as a Nobel Laureate on account of her being a woman. Ultimately, her lifetime work confirmed the Theory of Radioactivity. Tragically, it also led to her death. Curie died on July 4, 1934, from aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure.

[Twitter, IFLS]