October 19

1. 1900

   Planck lights the fuse of quantum physics

   To explain the glow of hot objects, Max Planck proposed that energy comes in tiny fixed packets rather than a smooth flow. He thought it a mathematical trick at first. It was the opening crack of the quantum revolution that would remake physics and, a century on, give us lasers, transistors, and computers.

   Source: Wikipedia

2. 1943

   The first cure for tuberculosis is found

   At Rutgers, a graduate student named Albert Schatz isolated streptomycin, the first antibiotic that could kill the bacterium behind tuberculosis. For the first time the disease that had killed about one in seven people could be cured with a drug. It was the first of a whole family of antibiotics dug out of soil microbes.

   Source: Wikipedia

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