TWISTS OF CHANCE
3 SEP 1928 · ST MARY'S, LONDON
The mold that was wiped away
3 September 1928. Alexander Fleming comes back from holiday to a cluttered London lab, and in our timeline one contaminated dish on that bench becomes penicillin. This is the timeline where he tidied up before he left.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
3 SEP 1928 · THE BENCH
Some hinges swing on a battle. This one swings on housekeeping. In our timeline, Alexander Fleming left for his summer holiday with a bench full of unwashed culture plates. He came back on the third of September to find a mold killing bacteria in a ring on one of them.
In the timeline recorded here, he had a tidy week. The plates were washed and the bench was wiped. The spore that drifted in through the window that August landed on clean stone and died. Nothing happened. That is the whole event.
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