First Blood Bank Opens: Chicago Saves Lives with Stored Blood
Dr. Bernard Fantus opened the world's first hospital blood bank at Chicago's Cook County Hospital, creating a system where stored blood could be matched and transfused on demand. This innovation transformed emergency medicine by turning fatal hemorrhages into treatable injuries, allowing surgeons to save lives during accidents and surgeries that previously guaranteed death.
March 15, 1937
89 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on March 15
He walked into Rome on foot instead of riding a chariot — and the crowd knew exactly what that meant. Aulus Manlius Vulso's ovation for ending the war with Veii…
A group of senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death on the floor of the Roman Senate, driven by fears that his accumulation of dictatorial power threatened the R…
Conspirators cornered Julius Caesar at Pompey's theatre, where a petition for his brother's recall triggered a coordinated stabbing by over sixty senators. The …
He was selling straw sandals when the empire fell apart. Liu Bei's bloodline connected him to the Han emperors, but through a prince from 150 years earlier—dist…
Sun Hao of Eastern Wu surrendered to the Jin emperor Sima Yan, ending the Three Kingdoms period that had fractured China for decades. This capitulation unified …
He'd already killed most of his family. But Constantius II was desperate — Persian armies threatened the eastern frontier while he fought usurpers in the West, …
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