| 1666 | | 14 Nov:
English diarist Samuel Pepys records the first description of a blood transfusion, dog-to-dog.W I R E D |
|
| 1721 | | 26 Jun:
During a smallpox outbreak in Boston, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston begins inoculating patients beginning with his own son.MassMoments CW |
|
| 1753 | | 11 Feb:
The first patients are admitted to the first hospital in America, Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin in 1751.PennMed UMW |
|
| | 7 Jun:
The world's oldest public museum, the British Museum is founded by Act of Parliament.BM tSP |
|
| 1780 | | 4 May:
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is founded.TiS AAoA&S |
|
| 1793 | |
| 1796 | |
| 1820 | | 20 Nov:
The whaling ship Essex is rammed and sunk by a sperm whale 2,000 miles off the west coast of South America, inspiring the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville.W I R E D |
|
| 1829 | | 17 Mar:
The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is organized with General Henry Dearborn elected its first president..GoogleBooks CA |
|
| | 16 Aug:
The original "Siamese Twins", Chang and Eng Bunker, arrive in Boston.CC Muse |
|
| 1831 | | 27 Dec:
The H.M.S. Beagle, with a crew of seventy-three men, sets sail out of Plymouth, England. On board is a young naturalist named Charles Darwin. SA |
|
| 1842 | |
| 1845 | | 28 Aug:
The first issue of Scientific American is published.SA SI |
|
| | 13 Sep:
The Irish Potato Famine begins with reports of blight in Gardeners' Chronicle.IC IP |
|
| 1846 | | 10 Aug:
The Smithsonian Institute is founded.SI USNA |
|
| 1847 | | 5 May:
The American Medical Association is founded.NEJM AMJMS |
|
| 1853 | |
| 1859 | | 21 Mar:
The charter is approved and signed for the first zoo in the U. S..PhillyMag AZA |
|
| | 24 Nov:
Charles Darwin publishes his groundbreaking volume, "On the Origin of Species".Literature.org NSF |
|
| 1862 | | 20 Apr:
The first pasteurization test, aimed at disproving the theory of spontaneous generation and proving food could be preserved by applied heat, is completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard.HP AZDHS |
|
| |
| 1863 | | 3 Mar:
The National Academy of Sciences is established.NAS Harvard |
|
| 1865 | | 8 Feb:
Gregor Mendel first presents his works on plant hybridization.Nature NIH |
|
| 1869 | | 26 Feb:
Physician Friedrich Miescher reports that he isolated DNA from white blood cells, naming it nuclein.SciDir RalfDahm |
|
| 1871 | | 27 Apr:
The American Museum of Natural History opens to the public.AMNH GoogleBooks |
|
| 1880 | | 6 Nov:
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French army surgeon, discovers the malaria parasite.CDC NIH |
|
| 1882 | | 24 Mar:
Robert Koch, a German physician and scientist, announces his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB).CDC PBS |
|
| 1887 | |
| 1888 | | 27 Jan:
The National Geographic Society is incorporated. WHP |
|
| | 22 Sep:
The National Geographic Society begins publishing its magazine. Biblio |
|
| 1895 | | 8 Nov:
William Roentgen (Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen) discovers X-rays.NobelPrize APS |
|
| 1896 | | 29 Jan:
Émil H. Grubbe becomes the first to use radiation to treat a patient with recurrent breast cancer.ASCoPost RK |
|
| 1897 | | 7 Mar:
The first bowl of flaked corn is served by Dr. John Kellogg at his sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan.W I R E D F&W |
|
| | 20 Aug:
World Mosquito Day marks the discovery of the malaria parasite.Mosquito EM |
|
| 1908 | | 3 Aug:
The first nearly complete skeleton of a Neanderthal is found.LS PNAS |
|
| 1912 | | 18 Dec:
Piltdown man, a presumed missing link, is unveiled to the world - proved a fake 40 years later.ClarkU AS |
|
| 1914 | | 1 Sep:
Martha, the last passenger pigeon, dies at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden.SI Audubon |
|
| 1915 | | 27 Mar:
Mary Mallon - Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in her final quarantine at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, where she would remain for the rest of her life.PBS AH |
|
| 1916 | | 11 Feb:
Emma Goldman, an American anarchist and feminist, advocate of free speech, the eight-hour work day and birth control, is arrested in New York City before giving a lecture on family planning.LoC PBS |
|
| 1918 | | Feb:
The Spanish Flu pandemic kills at least 3% of the World's population.VLib npr |
|
| | 21 Feb:
The last known Carolina Parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.Audubon USC |
|
| | 11 Mar:
At Fort Riley in Kansas, one of the first cases of what will become known as the Spanish Flu is recorded.WHO ACEP |
|
| 1922 | | 11 Jan:
Insulin is first used to successfully treat diabetes.MNT WHP |
|
| 1925 | |
| 1928 | | 28 Sep:
Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.NIH PBS |
|
| | 12 Oct:
A young polio sufferer at Children's Hospital in Boston becomes the first person to use the iron lung artificial respirator.W I R E D BMag |
|
| 1932 | | 28 Apr:
A vaccine for yellow fever is introduced.NIH |
|
| 1933 | | 12 Nov:
Hugh Gray takes the first photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.Nessie Hoaxes |
|
| 1936 | | 7 Sep:
The last known Tasmanian Tiger dies in captivity.NMA AusGeo |
|
| 1938 | | 23 Dec:
A coelacanth, previously known only from fossil evidence, is caught in the Chalumna River, near East London, South Africa. Nature SD |
|
| 1940 | | 27 Feb:
Carbon-14 is discovered by scientists Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben working at the University of California at Berkeley making it now possible to date once living material.W I R E D BerkLab |
|
| | 12 Sep:
The Lascaux Cave paintings are discovered.VVD YouTube |
|
| 1941 | | 12 Feb:
The first human trials of penicillin begin.Forbes NIH |
|
| 1943 | | 10 Jun:
Brothers László and Georg Bíró, Hungarian refugees living in Argentina, patent the ballpoint pen.W I R E D FPN |
|
| 1945 | | 25 Jan:
Fluoridation is introduced to drinking water.W I R E D ADA |
|
| 1946 | | 22 Feb:
Rutgers University Professor Selman A. Waksman announces a second (after penicillin) clinical application of antibiotics - streptomycin against tuberculosis.JC BALLYA |
|
| 1948 | | 7 Apr:
The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.WHO AJC |
|
| 1949 | | 6 Jan:
The first photograph of genes was taken at the University of Southern California by Dr. Daniel Chapin Pease and Dr. Richard Freligh Baker. TiS DE |
|
| 1952 | | 20 Sep:
Geneticists Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase publish their conclusion that DNA is where life's hereditary data is found.OSU RUP |
|
| 1953 | | 28 Feb:
At Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, scientists James D. Watson and Frances H.C. Crick announce that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA.NIH GO |
|
| | 26 Mar:
The success of the polio vaccine is announced on the radio.NIH WAPO |
|
| | 20 Nov:
Piltdown Man is reported to be a hoax in the bulletin of the British Natural History Museum.PBS |
|
| 1954 | |
| | 23 Dec:
The first successful human organ transplant occurs.npr NIH |
|
| 1955 | | 12 Apr:
Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine to the world.UMich CDC |
|
| 1956 | | 22 Dec:
A gorilla named Colo is born at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio - the first gorilla in the world born in captivity.CZ OHC |
|
| 1959 | | 17 Jul:
Mary Leakey discovers the earliest hominid fossil at Olduvai Gorge.TIME LF |
|
| 1960 | | 9 May:
The U. S. Food and Drug Administration approves the birth control pill.W I R E D PP |
|
| 1964 | | 11 Jan:
The U. S. Surgeon General declares that cigarette smoking is bad for your health.NIH CDC |
|
| 1967 | |
| 1968 | | 12 Nov:
In a unanimous decision, the U. S. Supreme Court rules that the Arkansas statute against the teaching of evolution was to protect a particular religious view, and was therefore unconstitutional.Findlaw Justia |
|
| 1969 | | 22 Jun:
The Cuyahoga River catches fire because of its polluted waters.W I R E D OHC |
|
| 1970 | | 22 Apr:
Happy Earth Day! ED EPA |
|
| 1975 | | 2 Jan:
The Monarch butterfly's overwintering sites are discovered in the Mexican mountains by Ken Brugger and Catalina Aguado.TBR NWF |
|
| 1978 | | 25 Jul:
The world's first "test-tube" baby is born.RR WNYC |
|
| 1979 | | 9 Dec:
Smallpox is declared eradicated by the WHO.NYAM NIH |
|
| 1980 | | 8 May:
Small Pox is declared eradicated by the World Health Organization.ABA CDC |
|
| 1981 | | 9 Apr:
The complete sequence of the 16,569-base pair human mitochondrial genome is presented in the journal Nature.GoogleBooks SCIRP |
|
| | 5 Jun:
The first research into the epidemic AIDS, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, is published.CDC HIV |
|
| 1982 | | 2 Dec:
Barney Clark receives the first permanent artificial heart implant, the Jarvik-7, invented by Robert K. Jarvik.NYTimes SIMag |
|
| 1983 | | 20 May:
The discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS is first published in the journal Science.Science NIH |
|
| 1989 | | 24 Mar:
The Exxon Valdez runs aground on the Alaskan coast creating one of the worst environmental disasters.AK EPA |
|
| 1991 | | 19 Sep:
Ötzi the Iceman is discovered entombed in a glacier in the Alps.SA |
|
| 1996 | | 5 Jul:
Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned mammal, is born.SA G&S |
|
| 2001 | | 15 Feb:
The Human Genome Project publishes its results to date in the journal Nature.Genome Nature |
|
| 2003 | |
| 2013 | | 1 Oct:
The Affordable Care Act goes into effect.NIH RMHP |
|
Biology