Sorry for the delay...I got several PMs all at once. If I missed anyone who wants a link to the store front, ding me again.
My intention was to wait on scientific discoveries because being a scientists, I've some pretty important ones that I don't think will make most readily findable lists on the internet, and I knew I could get value late. However, there is one big one left on the board that I cannot let slip past us again. I think it should've gone as a top 5-10 scientific discovery, and we contemplated drafting it as early as rounds 5-6. It's a discovery that overturned 2,000 years of Aristotelian belief and laid the foundation for most of modern science. It defined modern physics. With 13.18, Bonzai and I proudly select...
13.18 Galileo Galilei - Discovery that Falling Bodies Fall at a Uniform Rate Independent of Mass - Scientific Discovery
Ohhh nice pick (and one I have been eying for a while) but I'll take this one:01.19 BUILDING/STRUCTURE - Hagia Sophia
02.02 SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY - Human Anatomy Andreas Vesalius
03.19 PAINTING - The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci
04.02 NOVEL - Aesop's Fables Aesop
05.19 SCULPTURE - The Kiss Auguste Rodin
06.02 BUILDING/STRUCTURE - The Colossus of Rhodes Chares
07.19 COMPOSITION - The Four Seasons Antonio Vivaldi
08.02 INVENTION - Cuneiform Writing Sumerians
09.19 POLITICAL DOCUMENT - The Treaty of Tordesillas
10.02 POEM - The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
11.19 INVENTION - The Assembly Line by Ransome Eli Olds and Henry Ford
12.02 NON FICTION BOOK - Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius by Niccolo Machiavelli
13.19 SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY - Vaccination (1796) Edward Jenner
(short version) Edward Jenner, an English country doctor, performs the first vaccination against smallpox after discovering that inoculation with cowpox provides immunity. Jenner formulated his theory after noticing that patients who work with cattle and had come into contact with cowpox never came down with smallpox when an epidemic ravaged the countryside in 1788. (/short version)
The world had understood the potential of “exposure infers future immunity” since the times of the ancient Chinese (who used to blow dried skin flakes from small pox scabs into the nostrils of healthy people). The downfall though was that often the person would come down with the disease anyway which regularly resulted in death or disfigurement.
As a young physician, Jenner noted that dairy workers who had been exposed to cowpox, a disease like smallpox only milder, seemed immune to the more severe infection. He continually put forth his theory that cowpox could be used to prevent smallpox, but his contemporaries shunned his ideas. After observing cases of cowpox and smallpox for a quarter century, Jenner took a step that could have branded him a criminal, just as easily as a hero. On May 14, 1796 he removed the fluid of a cowpox from dairymaid Sarah Nelmes, and inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, who soon came down with cowpox. Six weeks later, he inoculated the boy with smallpox. The boy remained healthy. Jenner had proved his theory. He called his method vaccination, using the Latin word vacca, meaning cow, and vaccinia, meaning cowpox. He also introduced the word virus.
Within 18 months, the number of deaths from smallpox had dropped by two-thirds in England after 12,000 people were vaccinated. By 1800, 100,000 people had been vaccinated worldwide. As the demand for the vaccine rapidly increased, Jenner discovered that he could take lymph from a smallpox pustule and dry it in a glass tube for use up to three months later. The vaccine could then be transported. Although he constantly battled with the London College of Physicians (who refused him entry), he became a world wide celebrity. Napoleon released some English prisoners at his request during the war of 1804.. Thomas Jefferson would request and then use his vaccination serums and techniques on the people around his estate of Monticello.
Vaccination opened the door for mankind to conquer and eradicate diseases that were regularly culling the population. I don’t want to go much deeper as a few others in this category count as discoveries in their own right. Combined with the already drafted “disease theory of germs” and antibiotics, mankind has the foundation for longer life in place.
/edited for future draft cut and paste format
all around.I'm just catching up...went out for dinner last night, and the six of us showed up at the restaurant with 11 bottles. No way six people would finish all 11, right? Not only did we finish those, but we came back to my house and drank more.
so I will pass along to him as well.
