Rontgen Discovers X-Rays: A New Era in Medicine
Wilhelm Röntgen spotted a faint green glow from a fluorescent screen while testing Crookes tubes wrapped in black cardboard, revealing invisible rays that passed through books and his wife's hand. He named these unknown emissions "X-rays" and published the first paper on them within two months, earning the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics. This discovery immediately transformed medicine by enabling doctors to see inside living bodies without surgery, a capability his wife described as seeing her own death.
November 8, 1895
131 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on November 8
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