The keeper of the pitch drop experiment waited 52 years to see a drop fall, and never did. John Mainstone once missed one by stepping out for tea, and in 2000 the camera failed in a thunderstorm.

1927 · 1961 · 2000 · apart: 73 years

The experiment won an Ig Nobel Prize.

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The event

• The pitch drop experiment1927 · Brisbane. In 1927 Professor Thomas Parnell put pitch, a tar that looks solid and shatters under a hammer, into a funnel to show students it is really a liquid. Only nine drops have fallen since, and nobody has ever seen one actually fall.

20th century

More amazing facts

• 1926 Australia and New Zealand have argued for decades over who invented the pavlova.
• 1927 · 1952 The last wild European bison was killed in the Caucasus in 1927.
• 1927 The first feature-length talkie was mostly silent.
• 1928 1928: Fleming came back from holiday to find a mould killing his bacteria, sliced bread went on sale for the first time, and Mickey Mouse made his public debut in Steamboat Willie.
• 1928 · 1943 The US once banned sliced bread.
• 1928 · 1943 Penicillin for millions of soldiers came from a rotten melon.

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