The bright red flower called the poinsettia has become a traditional part of American Christmas celebrations. But the flower’s common name, which, while it sounds exotic, has nothing to do with the native name for the plant, is a reference to an American diplomat of whom a 1929 edition of the Baltimore Evening Sun wrote “His Career was as flamboyantly colorful as the poinsettia, and yet he is almost forgotten.”
In 1933 a farmer named Ed Carlson walked into a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin and asked a simple question- what was killing his cattle? The answer to that question would earn the university millions of dollars, and revolutionize the fields of both medicine and vermin extermination. The strange story of warfarin deserves to be remembered.