She Wanted a Mariah Carey Cake, Didn't Quite Get It

A pioneering female scientist was registering on the world's radar Monday, but not for the reason you might expect. It seems a woman in England told her co-workers she'd like a cake featuring Mariah Carey for her birthday, explains Mashable. Instead, she got Marie Curie because the store misunderstood the order. It happened to the cousin of Toronto writer Harriet Alida Lye, whose tweeted image of the resulting cake had north of 43,000 retweets and 200,000 likes as of Monday morning. Curie, she notes, is "looking very festive."

Carey, of course, surely qualifies for a cake, notes Live Science, but it argues that Curie is just as "cake-worthy." She shared a physics Nobel in 1903 for her research into radioactivity, then earned a chemistry Nobel eight years later after discovering the elements radium and polonium. Curie died at age 66 of a blood disease believed to have been caused by years of exposure to radiation. Meanwhile, the mix-up has caught the attention of Carey herself. "This could've been me if only I hadn't failed remedial math," she tweeted, adding a happy birthday to cake recipient Siobhan. (More Mariah Carey stories.)