It took 184 years to get from the first vaccination to a world without smallpox.
Jenner inoculated a boy with cowpox in 1796; in 1980 the WHO declared the disease eradicated — the only human disease ever wiped out.
The events
- Jenner's first vaccination1796 · Berkeley, England. In May 1796 country doctor Edward Jenner inoculated young James Phipps with cowpox and showed it protected against smallpox. Vaccination was born — a method that saved hundreds of millions of lives and later made smallpox eradication possible.
- Smallpox declared eradicated1980 · Geneva. On 8 May 1980 the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated, the first human disease ever wiped out. The WHO's global vaccination drive had been proposed by the USSR in 1958; the last natural case was found in Somalia in 1977.
More amazing facts
- 1794 The father of modern chemistry was executed as a tax collector.
- 1795 In 1795 cavalry captured a navy.
- 1795 In 1795 Britain taxed hair powder at a guinea a year.
- 1796 The word 'vaccine' comes from the Latin vacca, cow. Jenner took material from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes, who caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom.
- 1796 · 1867 Catherine the Great did not sell Alaska: she died 71 years before the deal.
- 1798 The Orthodox emperor Paul I became Grand Master of the Catholic Knights of Malta: in 1798, after Napoleon seized their island, the knights in Saint Petersburg elected the Russian tsar head of the order.