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CRISPR-Cas9 — The Molecular Scissors Rewriting Life
On June 28, 2012, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier publish in Science the demonstration that a bacterial RNA-protein complex can be reprogrammed to cut any double-stranded DNA sequence with 20-nucleotide precision. The cost of a genome edit drops from $5,000 (zinc finger nucleases) to $75. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020.
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Electromagnetic Induction — Faraday Turns Motion into Electricity
On August 29, 1831, Michael Faraday discovers that a magnet moving inside a copper coil generates a measurable electric current. This principle — Faraday's law — underpins every generator, transformer, and electric motor in the modern world.
ENIAC — The First Electronic Programmable Computer
In February 1946, ENIAC is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania. Weighing 27 tonnes, using 17,468 vacuum tubes, and consuming 150 kW, it performs 5,000 additions per second — 1,000× faster than any existing calculator.
Enigma and Turing — The Codebreaking That Shortened the War by Two Years
From 1940 to 1945, Alan Turing and the 10,000 cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park deciphered German Enigma communications — 158 × 10¹⁸ daily combinations, cracked through mathematical logic. Estimate by the official historian Harry Hinsley: the war shortened by at least two years.