Discovery of penicillin
A mould kills bacteria — the first mass antibiotic
In September 1928 Alexander Fleming noticed that a mould in a Petri dish was killing bacteria. Penicillin, purified from it in the 1940s by Florey and Chain, became the first mass-produced antibiotic and saved millions of lives.
Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 14 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 10 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 11 years later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 19 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 20 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 11 years earlier
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 11 years earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 1 year later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 8 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 13 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 20 years earlier
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 13 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 12 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 12 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 4 years later
Africa
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 24 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 6 years earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 7 years later
Asia
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 5 years earlier
- 1931 China floods — 3 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 6 years later
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 17 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 25 years later
Americas
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 15 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 14 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 14 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 1 year later
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 2 years later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 17 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 16 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 8 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 13 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 81)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 72)
- Marie Curie (aged 61)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 59)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 57)
- Winston Churchill (aged 54)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 50)
- Albert Einstein (aged 49)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 47)
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (aged 47)