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September 30 in Scottish History

On this day in 1813 John Rae, explorer and surveyor of Canada's northern coastline was born in Orkney. Several Orkney born explorers worked in the Canadian Arctic in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, but Rae was the most outstanding. He received The Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Gold Medal in 1852 for the scientific results of his first two explorations, but it is for the achievements on his third journey that he is best remembered. In 1845, John Franklin had disappeared trying to find the North West Passage. Several attempts to locate the party were made, but in 1854 Rae discovered the first traces of the Franklin expedition. All members of the expedition had died either due to hunger or cold. He used the reward money he received for locating the missing explorers to buy a schooner and spent the next few years doing survey work in Canada, mostly for the overland telegraph.

On this day in 1928, Alexander Fleming announced of the discovery of penicillin. Born in Ayrshire in 1881, Fleming qualified from medical school in 1906 after which he became a bacteriologist. In 1928, Fleming was studying staphylococci bacteria at St Mary's Hospital in London, having returned there after service in the Medical Corps during the war. He noticed that an accidental growth of mould, identified as Penicillium notatum, inhibited growth of the bacteria. He named it penicillin.

Although he was aware of the significance of his find, he was unable to produce a large enough quantity of penicillin to use on humans as he did not have the means to isolate the active compound. 12 years later, Chain and Florey developed a production method, spurred on by the need for antibacterial drugs created by World War II. Fleming was knighted in 1944, and he shared the Nobel Prize with Chain and Florey in 1945.