A melted candy bar and the microwave oven
A candy bar melts by a radar set: the microwave oven is born
Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer, who never finished grammar school, built magnetrons for radar. As the story goes, a candy bar in his pocket melted while he stood by a working set. Spencer began experimenting with food, and popcorn became the first food ever cooked by microwaves.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 6 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — same year
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 2 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 3 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 4 years later
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 17 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 12 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 9 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 4 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 8 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 9 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 4 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 3 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — same year
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 12 years later
Middle East
- 1923 Treaty of Lausanne — 22 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 13 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 3 years later
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 3 years later
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 8 years later
Africa
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 10 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 11 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 13 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 15 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 18 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — same year
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — same year
- 1947 Independence and Partition of India — 2 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 8 years later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 21 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 9 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 4 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 3 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 9 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 76)
- Winston Churchill (aged 71)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 67)
- Albert Einstein (aged 66)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 64)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 56)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 56)
- Mao Zedong (aged 52)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 27)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 16)