The stethoscope was invented out of embarrassment.
In 1816 doctor René Laennec felt awkward putting his ear to a young woman's chest, rolled some paper into a tube, and heard her heart better than ever before.
More amazing facts
- 1815 Two months before Waterloo, in April 1815, Indonesia's Tambora erupted — its ash brought the 'Year Without a Summer' to Europe and North America.
- 1815 Napoleon's Hundred Days actually lasted 110, from his return to Paris on 20 March 1815 to Louis XVIII's restoration on 8 July.
- 1815 · 1819 Modern Singapore is younger than the Battle of Waterloo: Stamford Raffles set up the British trading post there in 1819, four years after Napoleon's defeat.
- 1815 · 1817 The bicycle may owe its birth to a volcano.
- 1816 · 1819 The same rainy summer of 1816 that produced Frankenstein also gave birth to the aristocratic vampire, ancestor of Dracula.
- 1817 In 1817 Russia had forts both in California and in Hawaii: Fort Ross north of San Francisco and Fort Elizabeth on Kauai.