The Mysterious Death of Martin Bordoli
A reporter for the Tonopah Times of Tonopah, Nevada, made a phone call to Linus Pauling on October 25, 1956, to tell him about the untimely passing of seven-year-old Martin Bordoli. The reporter found the circumstances of this event suspicious, and even though he had no connection to the child, the reporter wanted Pauling’s opinion. The reporter told him that Martin lived in Twin Springs, Nevada, and his family and the other people living there frequently suffered from “sore eyes” (Richard Lee Miller, Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing). Whenever they were examined by AEC doctors, they were told that they had nothing to worry about. Also, a couple of months earlier, Martin had been playing in his front yard when a fine layer of black dust suddenly fell from the sky. The reporter called Linus Pauling because she had attempted to publish this as an article, but the newspaper was told that “as a patriotic duty, not to publish anything about it” (Paul Rubinson, Crucified on a Cross of Atoms). Linus Pauling realized that he could open the eyes of the citizens and of the government by showing the harm that was being done to children.