Animal world

This pigeon saved 500 soldiers during WWI. Read about her story

There’s a sled dog that battled a blizzard to deliver medicine, a horse that solved math problems, a cloned sheep, and that’s just the beginning. Some major events in history didn’t have people as their protagonists, but animals, and their stories deserve to be read. Here are 10 remarkable animals that changed science, war, medicine, and even the future of human flight.

It’s not uncommon to see cute animals perform impressive tricks, and there are even talent shows specifically for animals. But more than a century ago, one remarkable horse stunned Americans by appearing to read, spell, and solve math problems.

Beautiful Jim Key was born in Tennessee in 1889 and was trained by Dr. William Key, who had been born enslaved in 1833 and taught himself veterinary medicine after emancipation. Key noticed the young horse watching him play fetch with a dog and decided to see what else the animal could pick up. Using patience instead of harsh methods, Dr. Key taught Jim to recognize letters, numbers, and words well enough to amaze crowds across the country. The horse debuted in 1897 at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville. He could spell simple words, identify coins, operate a cashier, and hand back correct change to customers. President William McKinley watched him perform and called it one of the most astonishing exhibitions he had ever seen.

Detective shows lovers know that tiny clues can crack a case wide open. Fingerprints, footprints, and stray hairs have solved countless mysteries. In 1994, a criminal case was broken through due to a cat’s hair.

In 1994, Prince Edward Island, Canada, became the setting for one of forensic science’s most unusual breakthroughs. After the murder of Shirley Duguay, investigators found white cat hairs on a bloodstained jacket belonging to the natural suspect, Douglas Beamish, her partner. Tucked inside the lining were 27 strands of long white fur. Those hairs matched Snowball, Duguay’s pet cat, through DNA extracted from the fur. It marked the first criminal conviction in which non-human DNA played a decisive role. The case demonstrated that animal DNA could connect suspects to crime scenes just as effectively as human evidence. Snowball never knew he was helping detectives, but it was his fur that changed forensic investigations forever.

During wartime, a missed message could cost hundreds of lives. Long before radios became dependable on the battlefield, armies often relied on an unlikely messenger that could succeed when every other method had failed.

Cher Ami was a homing pigeon serving with the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI. In October 1918, more than 550 American soldiers of the "Lost Battalion" became trapped in France’s Argonne Forest and were mistakenly shelled by their own artillery. Major Charles Whittlesey had already lost two messenger pigeons to enemy fire when he released his last bird, a Black Check cock named Cher Ami, carrying a note begging American gunners to stop the barrage. Despite being shot through the chest, blinded in one eye, and nearly losing a leg, Cher Ami completed the flight carrying the desperate message that identified the battalion's true position. The shelling stopped, and roughly 194 soldiers survived the ordeal. The pigeon received the French Croix de Guerre, and her body is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

If you were watching the news in February 1997, you probably remember the day this story broke. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, though her existence stayed under wraps until researchers published their findings the following year.

She had been created by scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell from a single cell taken from the udder of a six-year-old Finn Dorset ewe using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Before Dolly, scientists believed adult cells were too specialized to create an entirely new animal. Her successful birth proved otherwise and became one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern biology. Dolly went on to live an ordinary-looking life at Roslin, grazing alongside other sheep and eventually giving birth to six lambs of her own. She passed in 2003, at age six, and her body is now preserved and on permanent display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she remains one of the most visited exhibits in the building.

If you need a medicine today, you probably walk a few blocks, get to your local chemist, and get it. However, in 1925, the inhabitants of Nome, Alaska, suffered a whole lot more than that to get some life-saving medicine, and the hero behind the story is a dog.

That year, a diphtheria outbreak threatened the people in Nome, one of the most isolated communities in the country. With airplanes grounded by brutal weather and sea routes frozen solid, officials organized an emergency relay of about 150 dogs and 20 mushers to transport lifesaving antitoxin across nearly 700 miles of Alaska. Balto is the dog that led the final 53-mile stretch through blinding snow and powerful winds, guiding musher Gunnar Kaasen safely into Nome on February 2, 1925. Although many teams contributed to the famous Serum Run, Balto became the public face of the mission. His achievement was celebrated with parades, newspaper headlines, and even a bronze statue in NYC’s Central Park.

Hot air balloons today are pretty common, but in the 18th century, they were a brand new invention, and no one really knew whether living creatures could survive the journey into the sky. Before risking human passengers, the Montgolfier brothers, French paper manufacturers from a small town in the south of France, decided to let a few animals go first.

Montauciel, whose name means "Climb to the Sky," was a sheep selected by the Montgolfier brothers for a historic balloon experiment in 1783. Accompanied by a duck and a rooster, the sheep lifted off from the grounds of the Palace of Versailles before King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and thousands of spectators. The balloon climbed roughly 1,500 feet and traveled about two miles before landing safely. Finding the animals unharmed reassured scientists that high-altitude flight was possible for living creatures. Just a few months later, on November 21, 1783, humans made the first free hot air balloon flight.

Everything around the FIFA World Cup revolves around taking home that golden cup and keeping it for the next four years. Imagine the chaos it must have been when the Jules Rimet Trophy was lost just before the tournament started in England in 1966.

Weeks before England was set to host the tournament, the Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen in broad daylight from a stamp exhibition at Westminster Central Hall in London, lifted from a display case despite a team of guards posted nearby. For a whole week, investigators looked for it, but couldn’t find it. On March 27, a week after the robbery, a Londoner named David Corbett was heading out for an evening walk with his four-year-old collie mix, Pickles, when the dog stopped to sniff a package tucked under a garden hedge near their home. Wrapped in a newspaper was the missing trophy. Corbett became a suspect for a brief time, but after all doubts about him were cleared, Pickles became an international celebrity, appearing on television, attending banquets, and even receiving a year's supply of dog food.

Many people grew up believing that making tools was what separated humans from every other living creature. But in the forests of East Africa, one chimpanzee challenged that belief without ever realizing how important his actions would become.

In 1960, while studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, researcher Jane Goodall observed an adult male chimp she named David Greybeard poking a stem of grass into a termite mound, pulling it out coated in insects, and eating them straight off the stalk. Days later, she watched him strip the leaves off a twig first, shaping it into a more effective tool. Goodall reported her findings, and the discovery forced experts to rethink what it meant to be human. Greybeard became one of the most famous chimpanzees in scientific history and helped transform the study of animal intelligence.

If you own a small dog, you know how amazing their ability to squeeze into tiny places is. During WWII, that simple ability turned one Yorkshire Terrier into an unlikely military hero whose size helped save lives.

Smoky was discovered in 1944 inside an abandoned foxhole in New Guinea by American soldiers. Weighing only about four pounds, she soon became the companion of Corporal William Wynne. During the fighting in the Philippines, engineers needed to run telephone wire through a narrow, 70-foot pipe beneath an airfield without exposing workers to enemy fire. Smoky was small enough to pull the line through while following her owner, sparing dozens of soldiers from dangerous work under attack. After the war, Wynne began bringing Smoky to visit wounded soldiers in military hospitals, and the effect she had on morale was so noticeable that historians now regard her as the first documented therapy dog. She lived until 1957 and is buried in Ohio, where a small statue marks the spot.

Visiting the zoo is a fun activity; kids love the thrill of seeing a wild animal up close. But people don’t usually think about how difficult life can be for animals raised by people, out of their own habitat. One lioness changed public attitudes about that and inspired millions to care about wildlife conservation.

In 1956, a Kenyan man named George Adamson made a tragic mistake by taking a lioness’ life in self-defense, only to discover she had been protecting three newborn cubs hidden nearby. Two of the cubs were sent to a zoo in the Netherlands, but the smallest, a female Adamson and his wife Joy named Elsa, stayed behind with the couple. Rather than raising her in captivity, the couple gradually taught her to hunt and live independently before releasing her into the wild. Joy later wrote "Born Free," published in 1960, which became an international bestseller and inspired the Academy Award-winning 1966 film of the same name. Elsa's story introduced countless readers and moviegoers to the importance of protecting Africa's wildlife while demonstrating that careful rewilding could succeed under the right conditions.

Stories of lucky accidents

Sometimes it pays to be sloppy: Products that were born from mishaps

Image: Jarritos Mexican Soda

Inventions are often conceived through order and precision. But sometimes they’re not. As history shows, on occasion it’s the chaotic, messy moments that lead to the greatest discoveries. From accidentally boiling tea leaves in their containing silk bag to forgetting a soda outside on a freezing night, these everyday objects owe their existence to observant and creative minds who found silver linings in mishaps. Let’s look into the creation of 10 well-known products that were born on days when things went wrong.

Image: Skitterphoto

People weren’t supposed to dip the small bundles of tea leaves in hot water. At least, that was not what American trader Thomas Sullivan intended in 1904 when he shipped samples of his tea to Europe in small silk bags to keep the leaves neatly separated. He hoped buyers would open the bags and pour hot water over the leaves using strainers, as was customary back then. However, many customers found that the silk bags were very practical for making tea easily.

This observation led to the development of small bags for marketing tea. Gradually, the industry evolved from silk bags to more sustainable and cheaper options. It was 30 years later that parchment paper dual-chamber bags were invented, leading to the teabags we know today.

Image: Tristan Gassert

Though wine had been produced in the northern French region of Champagne since Roman times, the Champenois had a long-lasting problem: refermentation. In winter, cold temperatures would halt the fermentation process. Dormant yeast cells would reactivate with the warmth of spring, releasing carbon dioxide gas. This pressure sometimes incorporated bubbles into the drink, and at worst, caused the bottles to explode in the cellars.

Dom Pierre Perignon, a monk in the 17th century, was tasked with finding a solution to refermentation. He experimented with grape varieties and processes for making wine, which led to the erroneous myth that he invented Champagne. While he was indeed the creator of winemaking practices that are relevant today, Champagne, as we know it today, was simply the evolution of that fizzy wine, which Champenois decided, in the end, wasn’t such a bad idea.

Image: Eva Bronzini

16th-century Dutch traders are credited with the invention of Brandy. Its name derives from the Dutch term for "burnt wine": brandewijn. That alone hints at an interesting story.

When wine needed to be stored to travel on long sea journeys, Dutch traders developed a heating distilling system to preserve it. The idea was to make a very concentrated version that could be rehydrated with water upon arrival. However, eventually, they noticed that this "burnt" version, when stored in wooden casks, developed a unique flavor and aroma that people enjoyed. This discovery led to different regions developing their own variations, giving rise to alternatives such as cognac and Armagnac.

Image: Taylor Heery

The creator of Popsicles was an 11-year-old, according to the company. One day in 1905, he forgot a cup of soda with a stirring stick outside on a cold night. By the next morning, he realized that the drink had frozen, but the stick made it easy to handle. Curious, he gave the frozen soda a try and liked it.

His name was Frank Epperson, and he initially called his invention as "Epsicles" and sold them locally. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he decided to patent the invention and commercialize it on a larger scale. Eventually, Epsicles were sold worldwide. The story goes that, because Frank’s children referred to them as "Pop’s sicles," the product was eventually rebranded as "Popsicles."

Image: Mathilde Langevin

According to the story, Constantin Fahlberg was enjoying his dinner after a long day working in the lab when he noticed that his bread tasted unusually sweet. He traced this quality back to a compound he had been studying earlier. He was a chemist analyzing coal tar at Johns Hopkins University, and that day in 1879 he had been handling a derivative called benzoic sulfimide.

After this discovery, aided by his mentor Ira Remsen, Fahlberg developed a synthesis of the substance he named "saccharin" (inspired by the Latin word for sugar, saccharon). The artificial sweetener soon became commercially available and was widely used during sugar shortages that occurred in World War I.

Image: u_rpnz0oibah

Nowadays, smoke detectors come in very compact plastic enclosures, making them easy to install in many homes. But they weren’t always the ceiling disks that we know today.

In the late 1930s, Swiss physicist Walter Jaeger was working on a device that would alert

people of poisonous gas leaks. Legend has it that, while taking a frustration break near one of his failed inventions, he lit a cigarette, and the machine detected it. The device was triggered and Jaeger realized that it could alert people of the presence of smoke. The first versions of the device were only available for industrial use until ​​American businessman Duane Pearsall developed a battery-powered detector in 1965, practical for home use.

Image: Ian Talmacs

In 1826, John Walker, an English chemist, accidentally invented matches while trying to create a new lighting method. He was mixing chemicals with a stick, and when he scraped the stick on the floor to clean it, the chemicals ignited, sparking the idea of lighting chemicals by friction.

He presented this concept in London and inventor Samuel Jones adopted it into the first version of friction matches. These early matches were unpredictable, often igniting with sparks and producing strong fumes. For this reason, as well as for marketing purposes, these early prototypes were known as "Lucifers" for many years.

Image: Ksenia Chernaya

In 1942, Harry Coover was an inventor at Eastman Kodak Company, where the team was trying to develop clear plastic guns to supply to Allied soldiers during World War II. They were testing the material cyanoacrylate, a compound that turned out to be incredibly durable but extremely sticky, so it was discarded.

A decade later, while reviewing his notes, Coover remembered cyanoacrylate and returned to its investigation. He quickly realized that it was a powerful substance for holding things together, without the need for pressure or heat. In the 1950s, the Eastman team marketed this product as "Eastman 910," which was later renamed "Super Glue."

Image: falco

This is another example of life-changing technology born thanks to a machine not doing what it was supposed to. In 1958, engineer Dr. Wilson Greatbatch was trying to design equipment that would record the rhythm of the heart. He installed an incorrect resistor in the circuit and observed that the system produced intermittent pulses.

This discovery led to the design of a small device that could aid the beating of a human heart, though it took time to develop one that could be implanted. By 1958, Greatbatch and his collaborators had created a prototype that was tested on patients. The doctor spent the following decades iterating and perfecting his invention.

Image: Owen Beard

We conclude with one of the most famous examples: German physics professor Wilhelm Röntgen stumbled on what he called "X-rays" by accident. Imagine experimenting with cathode rays in 1895 and suddenly noticing that a strange glow can pass through several opaque objects in your office.

In preliminary articles, Röntgen referred to this radiation as "X" to signify that its type was unknown. The label stuck even as these rays were further experimented with. Its medical relevance soon became obvious, and the first photographic plate made with X-rays was of his wife’s hand. Records say that upon seeing the image of her bones, she remarked, "I have seen my death."