In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from a Suffolk holiday to find a Petri dish of Staphylococcus contaminated by a blue-green mould possibly carried from a mycology lab downstairs, and the clear ring of dead bacteria around the fleck became the accidental start of the antibiotic era

A lab mistake that killed bacteria became the gateway to modern medicine—but Fleming's real genius was recognizing what others would have simply discarded. The post In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from a Suffolk holiday to find a Petri dish of Staphylococcus contaminated by a blue-green mould possibly carried from a mycology lab downstairs, and the clear ring of dead bacteria around the fleck…