Felix Hoffmann
(21 January 1868 – 8 February 1946)

The German company Bayer patents aspirin on March 6, 1899.
Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found
in the bark of willow trees. In its primitive form, the active
ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine,
beginning in ancient Greece when Hippocrates used it to relieve
pain and fever. Known to doctors since the mid-19th century, it
was used sparingly due to its unpleasant taste and tendency to
damage the stomach.

In 1897, Bayer employee Felix Hoffmann found a way to create a
stable form of the drug that was easier and more pleasant to take.
(Some evidence shows that Hoffmann’s work was really done by
a Jewish chemist, Arthur Eichengrun, whose contributions were
covered up during the Nazi era.)

CAMILLE BOHANNON

It was on this day in 1904.

King Hussein of Jordan married 26-year-old American Lisa Halaby, who
became Queen Noor on this day in 1978.

Ella Fitzgerald died this day in 1996.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel (October 21, 1833 – December 10, 1896)

Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel used his
fortune posthumously to institute the Nobel Prizes. In his lifetime he issued
350 patents internationally and established 90 armaments factories. He grew
up wealthy after his father invented modern plywood and filed his first patent
himself in 1857, for a gas meter. While studying explosives, a shed he was
using for the preparation of nitroglycerin, exploded at a factory in Heleneborg, 
Stockholm and killed five people, including his younger brother Emil.