Forssmann threads a catheter into his own heart
A young surgeon fed a tube into his own heart, then got an X-ray
Forbidden to try the risky procedure, 25-year-old Werner Forssmann did it on himself: he pushed a catheter up a vein in his arm into his heart, then walked to the X-ray room to photograph it. He had to leave the clinic, and in 1956 received the Nobel Prize.
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To experiment on himself, a surgeon tricked a nurse. Gerda Ditzen agreed to be the subject, but Werner Forssmann strapped her to the table and threaded the catheter into his own heart instead. It won him a Nobel Prize 27 years later. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 15 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 11 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 10 years later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 18 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 19 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 12 years earlier
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 12 years earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — same year
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 7 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 12 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 21 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 14 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 13 years earlier
- 1923 Treaty of Lausanne — 6 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 3 years later
Africa
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 25 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 7 years earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 6 years later
Asia
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 6 years earlier
- 1931 China floods — 2 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 5 years later
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 16 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 24 years later
Americas
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 16 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 15 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 15 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — same year
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 1 year later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 18 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 17 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 7 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 12 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 13 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 82)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 73)
- Marie Curie (aged 62)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 60)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 58)
- Winston Churchill (aged 55)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 51)
- Albert Einstein (aged 50)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 48)
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (aged 48)