MOS: The Hubble Deep Field
“practical uses of this instrument would not be immediate; this would be an instrument which might be expected to increase very basically our understanding of what goes on in the stars and in the spaces between them.”
Science History
MOS: Wrinkle Cream & Prison Labor
A newly trained dermatologist, he was hired by Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, PA to help treat an outbreak of athlete’s foot. In Holmesburg, he saw far more than fungal infections; he saw potential.
MOS: FDR and Guillain Barre Syndrome
But was it polio or was it Guillain-Barré syndrome? Because the latter only existed in name five years before FDR’s illness, which perhaps wasn’t enough time for every doctor to sort out the difference with 1920s internet.
MOS: The 1904 Olympic Marathon
At eighteen miles, Hicks was given brandy, egg whites, and one milligram of strychnine. Which revived him for a time, but he needed another dose four miles later.
MOS: A Brief History of Light
About a century later, another genius polymath named Thomas Young came along and went all “waves, motherfuckers,” with an early version of the double slit experiment.
MOS: Spinal Cocaine
Along with reducing fatigue, it also suppresses appetite, manages altitude sickness, and makes you really want to talk about your screenplay at 4am.
MOS: The Human Radiation Experiments
A eugenicist superintendent at a school in Massachusetts approved feeding lightly radioactive oatmeal to his mentally disabled students. But they took the kids to some Red Sox games, so.
MOS: Minoxidil
A pharmaceutical company founded in 1886, Upjohn (now a part of Pfizer) had a solid reputation that it wasn’t about to sully by making bald-today-hair-tomorrow pills.
MOS: Dr. Evelyn Hooker
Hooker then gave those results- blinded- to a panel of clinicians and asked them to sort out the gays and the straights. Which was a thing psychological science was supposed to be able to do because these people had a real mental illness, right? Riiiight?
MOS: The Fermi Paradox
Out of nowhere, Fermi blurted out, “where is everybody?” His lunch companions knew he was referring to those long absent little green men.