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On this day, January 23, 1922, fourteen year old Canadian Leonard Thompson received the first successful insulin injection as a treatment for diabetes. Thompson, who was in a coma due to Type 1 Diabetes, was given an injection on January 11, but apparent impurities caused a sever allergic reaction. Biochemist James Collip worked to improve and purify the ox-pancreas extract. The second injection on January 23 brought the boy out of his coma and was a complete success. Prior to the development of insulin, people with Type 1 diabetes did not survive for more than a few weeks or months with the disease.
During the later half of the nineteenth century numerous attempts were made to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Killing the Tsar, however, turned out to be no easy task.
The St Louis World’s Fair, officially known as the Louisiana Purchase Expedition, was an enormous event, with more than 60 countries and 43 states maintaining exhibition spaces for nearly twenty million visitors. In addition to the many exhibitions, a variety of private enterprises set up camp near the fair in the hopes of making money off the guaranteed audience. Some of those ideas worked better than others, but few among them went as ridiculously badly as the attempt to put on a Spanish-Style bullfight.
