- On this day in 1928, Alexander Fleming announced of the discovery of penicillin. Born in Ayrshire in 1881, Fleming qualified from medical school in 1906 after which he became a bacteriologist. In 1928, Fleming was studying staphylococci bacteria at St Mary’s Hospital in London, having returned there after service in the Medical Corps during the war. He noticed that an accidental growth of mould, identified as Penicillium notatum, inhibited growth of the bacteria. He named it penicillin. Although he was aware of the significance of his find, he was unable to produce a large enough quantity of penicillin to use on humans as he did not have the means to isolate the active compound. 12 years later, Chain and Florey developed a production method, spurred on by the need for antibacterial drugs created by World War II. Fleming was knighted in 1944, and he shared the Nobel Prize with Chain and Florey in 1945.
- 1919 Elaine Massacre: Arkansas state militia and rioters kill over 200 hundred Black people in response to sharecroppers' attempt to organize against landowners; trials of survivors for murder leads to Supreme Court enacted judicial reforms [1] [2] [3]
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