• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

We often rely on the medicine cabinet when headaches and stomach pains creep up, but how often have you paused in a moment of discomfort to think about the origins of the medications that aid your maladies? Chances are, not very often. Yet many of the over-the-counter drugs kept in a home first-aid kit have their own interesting stories — like these eight common items.

Benadryl

The tiny pink tablets that can clear up allergic reactions may never have been invented if chemist George Rieveschl had succeeded in his first career. The Ohio-born scientist initially planned to become a commercial artist, but couldn’t line up much work thanks to the Great Depression. Instead of pursuing his art dream, Rieveschl studied chemistry at the University of Cincinnati, where his experiments years later on muscle-relaxing drugs uncovered a histamine-blocking medication. “It seemed like bad luck at the time,” Rieveschl once told the Cincinnati Post about his unexpected career shift, “but it ended up working pretty well.”

Tums

Creating a new medication is sometimes a labor of love — at least, that’s the case for Tums. In 1928, Missouri pharmacist Jim Howe developed the chalky tablets to treat his wife’s indigestion. However, it wasn’t until Nellie Howe gave out samples of her husband’s concoction to seasick travelers on a cruise ship that Jim was inspired to sell his acid relievers. Tums hit pharmacy shelves two years later, sold for 10 cents per roll, with a name chosen from a radio contest in St. Louis, the same city where 99% of Tums have been made for nearly 100 years.

Eye Drops

Soothing irritated eyes isn’t just a modern problem — researchers believe humans have been using some form of eye drops for at least 3,500 years. Medicinal recipes from ancient Egyptians included heavy metals like copper and manganese. Modern eye drops are far removed from these early origins, but most contain saline, which was first used for medical treatment in 1832.

Pepto-Bismol

No one knows why the original maker of bismuth subsalicylate, aka Pepto-Bismol, chose to dye it a bright pink, considering the solution is actually beige before coloring is added. However, the unnamed physician from the early 1900s who first mixed up the stuff is credited with trying to cure cholera, a deadly food and waterborne illness that causes severe stomach distress. Initially called “Mixture Cholera Infantum” and meant for small children, the stomach-soothing blend contained zinc salts, oil of wintergreen, and a now-iconic pink coloring, among other ingredients. While the early version of Pepto couldn’t cure cholera (which requires rehydration and sometimes antibiotics), it did help treat symptoms, which is why it became popular with doctors. In the early 20th century, New York’s Norwich Pharmacal Company sold its version, called Bismosal, in 20-gallon tubs; today, name brand Pepto-Bismol is manufactured by Procter & Gamble, who continue to dye it the recognizably rosy hue.

Aspirin

The headache-melting ingredient in aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, is a human-made substance, though it’s a cousin to salicylic acid, a naturally occurring substance found in the bark of willow and myrtle trees. Humans have gathered those ingredients for medicinal remedies for millennia; ancient Egyptians and Greeks used them to tamp down fevers and pain. Synthetic versions were first made in 1874, and by the turn of the century, German chemist Felix Hoffman created the first aspirin — initially sold in powder form — as a remedy for his father’s rheumatism.

Acetaminophen

American chemist Harmon N. Morse first developed acetaminophen, which would eventually become the world’s most widely used pain reliever, in 1878. However, it would take decades for the medication — called paracetamol outside the U.S. — to become an over-the-counter medication, thanks to fears that it could cause methemoglobinemia, a blue skin discoloration that signals issues with how blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body. (The fears turned out to be unfounded.) In 1955, McNeil Laboratories began manufacturing its version of the drug, called Tylenol, which would eventually be purchased by Johnson & Johnson and marketed as more safe and effective than aspirin. While many scientists didn’t agree with this claim, Tylenol became an over-the-counter medication within five years and soared in popularity in the following decades.

Ibuprofen

The inventors of ibuprofen created the inflammation-relieving drug with one health condition in mind: rheumatoid arthritis. Pharmacologist Stewart Adams and chemist John Nicholson began their hunt for an aspirin alternative in the 1950s, with the goal of creating a safe, long-term option for patients with the autoimmune condition. Testing one experimental compound on his own headache following a night of drinking, Adams found the prizewinning formula, which was patented in 1962 and rolled out to U.K. pharmacies under the name Brufen. By 1984, ibuprofen had become an over-the-counter medication in the U.K. and U.S., and by the time its original patent expired in 1985, more than 100 million people in 120 countries had taken the medication.

Multivitamins

Vitamins are more preventative than reactive; they can’t cure indigestion or discomfort. But in their earliest forms, vitamins were meant to ward off health conditions caused by nutritional deficiencies. The first commercial vitamin tablets emerged in 1920 following decades of research into illnesses such as beriberi (a vitamin B1 deficiency), and gained traction during World War II due to fears of nutritional constraints caused by rationing. Vitamin consumption held on after the war ended, and today nearly 60% of Americans take a daily vitamin or dietary supplement.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

None of our senses is as frequently maligned as our sense of smell. Our noses, while convenient, often are portrayed as second-tier sniffers, behind the gifted olfactory senses of dogs, sharks, and other animals. It’s said our noses can’t even smell that many distinct odors. And after all, smell doesn’t help us navigate our world as much as our sight or touch does — supposedly. However, all of these purported “facts” are actually fictions. The seven (real) facts below explain just how amazing our sense of smell really is.

Olfaction Is the Oldest Sense

When complex life established a foothold on Earth 1.5 billion years ago, smell was the first sense that evolution developed. Chemoreception — detecting chemicals in the environment by scent — is a common trait among all animals, and even single-celled organisms. Smell is vital not only for finding food but also for finding a mate, a pretty key ingredient for furthering your particular limb on the tree of life. But although this sense is ubiquitous throughout the various phyla, kingdoms, and domains, not all organisms smell the same way. Single-celled organisms use a protein in the cell wall to detect chemicals, while plants use mechanisms baked in their genes to detect volatile organic compounds. Snakes, meanwhile, use their forked tongues to “grab” scents and then quickly return them to the olfactory bulb located at the roof of their mouths. This allows snakes to discern the direction of smells, which scientists describe as “smelling in stereo.” When it comes to life’s oldest sense, evolution has had more than enough time to create a variety of techniques.

Our Nose Can Sense 1 Trillion Odors

Humans are actually better than dogs when it comes to detecting certain smells, and our noses can actually sniff out a staggering 1 trillion (yes, with a “t”) odors. The impressive nature of our noses is a relatively recent discovery, however, which may explain why the human sense of smell long got a bad rap. Nearly a century ago, scientists pegged the human nose’s olfactory abilities at about 10,000 distinct smells — not bad, but far less impressive than our eye’s ability to glimpse 1 million colors (or more, for those lucky tetrachromats). In 2014, researchers from Rockefeller University in New York City decided to take a closer look at the nose’s true powers, and found that the human nose was much more capable than we imagined, giving the phrase “the nose knows” a whole new level of credibility.

Smell Is Closely Entwined With Memory

Sometimes smells like fresh-cut grass, a delicious baked pie, or a particular deodorant will bring back a long-forgotten recollection that sends you strolling wistfully down memory lane. Well, that’s by biological design, and it has to do with the way the human brain is wired. Unlike our four other best-known senses — which are first routed through the thalamus before reaching the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with memory — smells are sent directly to the olfactory bulb located above the nasal cavity. While this bulb is directly tied into the hippocampus, it’s also connected with the emotion-processing amygdala, which is why smells can elicit such potent memories. Because smells can deliver these powerful whiffs of nostalgia, companies including Nike, Verizon, and many others have developed — and sometimes even trademarked — certain smells associated with their retail stores and products.

Some Women Don’t Have Olfactory Bulbs (But Smell Fine)

The olfactory bulb, as the name suggests, is central to our sense of smell. With millions of olfactory receptor cells, the bulb helps translate smells into signals the brain can interpret, so no olfactory bulb means no sense of smell — or so we thought. In 2019, scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel were studying why some people have such a particularly strong sense of smell when they discovered in an MRI scan that one 29-year-old participant was completely missing her olfactory bulb. The woman was also left-handed — a factor that when combined with a missing olfactory bulb has a known effect on the organization of the brain. After poring over more data, the scientists estimated that 0.6% of women (and 4.25% of left-handed women) don’t have an olfactory bulb, but nevertheless can smell as well as — and in some cases even better than — those with one. Strangely, missing bulbs were not found in men.

How is this possible? Well, we don’t really know (yet). It’s possible that functions associated with the bulb were disorganized in these particular southpaws, meaning the necessary receptors are still there, just arranged in ways imperceptible to MRI scans. For now, the mystery remains.

Our Sense of Smell Is Strongest in the Evening

Although it’s imperceptible to the average person, smell actually fluctuates throughout the day. Research conducted by Brown University in 2017 studied 37 teenagers for a week and measured their sense of smell in relation to levels of melatonin, a hormone that helps induce sleep. The study found that our sense of smell is intimately entwined with our circadian rhythm — the natural cycle our bodies experience every day. When participants were approaching “biological night” around 9 p.m., their sense of smell was heightened, but strangely the opposite was true between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. Although scientists don’t know the reason for this sniffing discrepancy, one theory harkens back to our evolution. In our hunter-gatherer days, the body might’ve ramped up our sense of smell right before sleep in an effort to hunt (or forage) for that last meal or to detect any nearby threats before bedding down for the night. An increased sense of smell might’ve also encouraged some pheromone-induced mating. Whatever the reason, humanity’s sense of smell appears to be a bit of a night owl.

Humans Are Wired To Smell Petrichor

You know that earthy smell that always accompanies rain after a long dry spell? That specific aroma has a name, “petrichor.” Coined in 1964 by Australian scientists (who would know a thing or two about dry spells), “petrichor” is a portmanteau of “petros” (stone) and “ichor,” which is a name for a bloodlike “ethereal fluid” of the gods in Greek mythology. The smell comes from actinobacteria that release organic compounds known as geosmin into the air when it rains. What’s strange is that humans are incredibly sensitive to the stuff — our ability to smell petrichor is far more sensitive than the ability of sharks to smell blood in the water. Many of humanity’s modern biological oddities can be explained by the hundreds of thousands of years spent living in hunter-gatherer tribes, and our keen sense for petrichor is another one to add to the list. Some scientists theorize our noses are so fine-tuned to sniff out this smell because finding water and rainy weather was often a matter of survival — and where there’s petrichor, there’s water. So the next time that telltale smell tickles your nostrils, sit back and marvel at the meticulous machinations of evolution that made such a moment possible.

You Can Smell Emotions

Most people are familiar with the power of pheromones, but research is hazy at best regarding what role they play in human behavior and sexual attraction. Bees, for example, possess a vomeronasal organ that detects pheromones and sends signals to the brain. While some humans possess the remnants of this organ, it’s vestigial and nonfunctional. However, scientists expect that other parts of the olfactory system might’ve picked up the slack, making chemoreception between humans possible. A study conducted in 2012 collected sweat from male participants as they watched fear- or disgust-inducing movies. When women participants were asked to do a visual task while exposed to the sweat samples, scientists monitored their facial expressions and discovered that women matched the emotion that originally elicited the sample — a sign that something in the sweat activated some form of chemoreception locked away in the human mind.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

Although radio is sandwiched between two revolutionary communication technologies — the telegraph and the television — the medium has remained remarkably resilient. First broadcast at the end of the 19th century, radio continues to provide the soundtrack to countless commutes. However, its importance goes far beyond local shock jocks and Top 40, and it still underpins the modern world. Here are six amazing facts about radio, from its remarkable discovery to its transformation into a world-changing communication system.

Radio Waves Were Theorized Before They Were Discovered

The scientific community knew about radio waves before anyone discovered actual evidence of them. In 1865, Scottish mathematician and physicist John Clerk Maxwell predicted the existence of radio waves in a paper titled “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,” based on a presentation he gave before the Royal Society in December 1864. He also developed a set of electromagnetism equations known to history as “Maxwell’s equations.”

Although Maxwell gave due deference to his predecessor Michael Faraday, who had discovered electromagnetic induction among other principles of electromagnetism, many consider Maxwell’s work — which predicted various waves along the electromagnetic spectrum — a pivotal moment in the history of science and technology. These waves remained theoretical for more than 20 years, until German physicist Heinrich Hertz demonstrated radio waves for the first time in his laboratory in 1888 — forever transforming the history of communication.

The First Reported Transatlantic Radio Transmission Might Never Have Happened

Although Hertz got his own unit of frequency for his trouble, the undisputed giant of early radio is Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. After studying the work of Maxwell, Hertz, and other influential physicists while growing up, Marconi sent a radio signal more than a mile at his estate in Pontecchio, Italy, in 1895. Sensing both opportunity and celebrity, Marconi took out several patents and demonstrated his system throughout Europe. Then, on December 12, 1901, Marconi set out to prove that radio waves were not impacted by the curvature of the Earth. With a transmitter set up in Newfoundland, Canada, and another in Cornwall, England, some 2,100 miles away, Marconi waited for the three clicks (the letter “S” in Morse code) coming from Cornwall to prove that his invention — and the radio waves it produced — could work across long distances. Accompanied by his assistant George Kemp, Marconi believed he heard the expected three clicks, proving that his invention worked. Kemp also agreed that he heard the clicks.

Today, many experts are skeptical that the pair actually heard the clicks, since Marconi had many motives to act as if they did (and Kemp may have gone along). There were no independent witnesses, and it’s highly implausible the technology would have been capable of producing a transatlantic transmission at the time. It’s likely we’ll never know for sure what really happened that day.

The Most Powerful Radio Station Ever Was in Cincinnati, Ohio

In May 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in the White House, and the world’s first “super station,” WLW, came to life near Cincinnati, Ohio. The station used an 831-foot, 500-kilowatt tower capable of sending a signal halfway around the world. The project was designed as a temporary experiment to spread radio waves far and wide, but unfortunately, its immense power and operating costs proved to be too much. Stations far away from Cincinnati but still within range of the 700-hertz frequency complained of constant interference. People living close to the tower also reported hearing the broadcast vibrating along metal kitchen pans, barbed-wire fencing, or even bedsprings. After five years, Congress decided 500 kilowatts was simply too powerful, and limited broadcasts to 50 kilowatts — the current limit for AM clear-channel stations today.

The First Radio Commercial Was for a Real Estate Developer in NYC

In August 1922, New York radio station WEAF created something that would change the radio industry forever — it broadcast the very first radio commercial. The ad spot was for an apartment complex in Jackson Heights, Queens. Although radio ads are an obvious innovation now, one worry among early radio stations was how to make money from the service, since people weren’t charged for the endless stream of programming itself. Initially ads may not have seemed like a profitable strategy given the limited number of listeners, but economics changed as more radios began to find their way into American homes. Between 1923 and 1930, the number of Americans who owned at least one radio jumped to 60%, meaning that there were enough listeners for the radio ad business to be booming.

Radio Is an Extremely Important Tool for Astronomers

Because radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum — one of the fundamental forces of nature — stars, quasars, planets, galaxies, and dust galaxies emit them. Some of the earliest attempts to use radio to investigate the stars came at the turn of the 20th century, when astronomers attempted to pick up radio emissions emanating from our sun. Today, radio astronomy is an entire field of dedicated scientists pointing massive radar arrays at the stars in an effort to glimpse things unseen by the naked eye. One of the most impressive radio telescopes in the U.S. is the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope located in West Virginia. The telescope is the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world, and the machine is so sensitive to radio waves that Wi-Fi is illegal in the 13,000-square-mile “National Radio Quiet Zone” surrounding the telescope.

The Eiffel Tower Avoided Destruction Because of Radio

It’s hard to imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower, but the iconic tower wasn’t meant to stick around forever. Gustave Eiffel originally built his eponymous tower for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, and the city only leased the land to Eiffel for 20 years. After that, the land was to be returned to Paris and the tower demolished. Knowing the destruction in store for his precious monument, Eiffel set about finding some way to make the tower both useful and symbolic. On November 5, 1898, the Eiffel Tower participated in an early demonstration of radio when a signal was sent from the tower’s tip to the Pantheon some 2.5 miles away.

In the early 20th century, Eiffel doubled down on transforming his monument to progress into a full-fledged radio tower. By 1908, radio waves emanating from the Eiffel Tower could reach distances of more than 3,500 miles, and its creator had successfully proved its strategic worth. The Eiffel Tower then proved vital during World War I as it intercepted radio messages sent by the Central Powers. Today, the tip of the Eiffel Tower is still home to various radio antennas.