Humans love color. It affects our moods, attracts our attention, defines our culture. We use it in our national identities, and we’ll spend weeks agonizing over swaths of it for our kitchen. Our visual sense is often our strongest, and color has been an important part of our existence from our very earliest history. Sometimes a color can change the world, for good or for evil, or be associated with some of our greatest events or customs.

10Color-Coded Saints Changed The Meaning Of Blue

In 431, the Catholic Church assigned color to its various saints, with Mary the mother of Jesus receiving the color of blue. Blue was an expensive and rare dye, perfect for religious use. Over time, Mary’s blue became what we’d recognize today as navy blue, and its association with Mary meant blue took on a meaning of trustworthiness and innocence and also led to its use in police and military uniforms.

With time, that color is now associated with authority (or even authoritarianism) more than it is with Mary or trustworthiness. Because of this, the United Nations specifically adopted a lighter shade of blue when it designed uniforms for its peacekeeping troops.

9Color Tv Changed American Politics

In 1976, the NBC network, which was the first fully colored network, chose a color-coded, illuminated map used to distinguish which states had voted for which party in the presidential race: blue if the states had voted for Republican Gerald Ford and red if for Democrat Jimmy Carter. Eventually, other networks used similar devices, but in the 1980 election, there was no standard. On one channel Reagan voting states would be blue, but on others red.

It wasn’t until the heated 2000 election, when calling a state for either candidate was a long and suspenseful process, that a standard color scheme developed across the board. Red was assigned to Republican candidate George W. Bush and blue to the Democratic candidate Al Gore. “Red states” and “blue states” were born, and those monikers have been used increasingly ever since in the American political landscape.

8Purple Proof Of Royalty

In the Mediterranean, a sea snail, Bolinus brandaris, has a mucus that can be used to produce a purple dye. It would take some 250,000 poor sea snails to make just one ounce of this purple. Yet this was the only source of purple dye in the ancient world, so the color was very expensive. A pound of purple wool cost more than an average year’s wage at the time. It became status symbol for the rich and powerful. Ancient Rome, Egypt, and Persia all associated the color with royalty. Purple was prized greatly in the Byzantine Empire, where rulers wore purple, signed edicts in purple ink, and even their children were considered “born in the purple.”

The association continued to England, where during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it was forbidden for anyone not in the immediate royal family to wear the color. This monopoly mostly continued until 1856, when an 18-year-old chemist named William Henry Perkins accidentally created a synthetic purple dye while trying to make an anti-malaria drug. For thousands of years, purple defined governments and status, divine right, and rulership, and now, we can casually throw on a purple scarf before jogging to the corner shop.

7Pink As A Color Of Support

Pink as a symbol for the fight against breast cancer can be traced back to a different color entirely. It began with a yellow ribbon used by Penny Laingen as a symbol of awareness and support for her husband during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. A decade later, an activist group called Visual AIDS used a red ribbon as a way to raise similar awareness and support. From there, every charity used their own color of ribbon to support different causes, so much so that The New York Times labeled 1992 as the “Year of the Ribbon.”

One important result was the Pink Ribbon as a symbol in raising awareness of and support for those suffering through breast cancer. In many ways, it is the most successful movement of its kind, and its footprint can be seen the world over. Firefighters are wearing pink, the NFL is sporting the color, and even moving trucks and cranes are painted.

6Orange Varnish Makes Music Worth Millions

Antonio Stradivari is perhaps the most well-known instrument maker in history. From the late 1600s to the early 1700s, he crafted some of the most beautiful and sought-after instruments ever made. Some of his work sells for tens of millions at auction.

One defining feature of his violins is the brilliant orange varnish used in their construction. While it would be an oversimplification to attribute the quality of a Stradivari violin solely to the varnish, it has long been thought that his unique varnish provided a critical piece to the puzzle. More evidence of his talent lies in the recent discovery that his orange varnish recipe contains common materials, easily available to other instrument makers of the time. Yet none of his peers’ work remains as timeless and unforgettably beautiful as the music made from the orange violins of Stradivari.

5International Orange Defines A City

In the 1930s, bridges were traditionally black, gray, or maybe silver to spice things up. But things were changing in San Francisco. The largest suspension bridge ever built was being constructed over the Golden Gate Strait, and the consulting architect on the project Irving Morrow, who designed the bridge’s iconic styling and lighting, also had a thought on the color.

“The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the greatest monuments of all time.” He said, “Its unprecedented size and scale, along with its grace of form and independence of conception, all call for unique and unconventional treatment from every point of view. What has been thus played up in form should not be let down in color.”

Inspired by the red steel primer used on the project, Morrow began extensive color studies with engineers, painters, sculptors, and other architects. The result of this collaboration was the color International Orange. The orange has come to define one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world, as well as the city it resides in.

4Yellow Topples A Tyrant

Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorial rule of the Philippines was resisted by opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, whose favorite color was yellow. When Ninoy Aquino was shot and killed in 1983, his supporters took their cue from the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” and used yellow ribbons as a memorial and show of support all around the airport where he died.

From then on yellow became the color of the revolution. The opposition united behind Ninoy’s widow Corazon Aquino, who wore a yellow dress while campaigning against Marcos. When warned that this yellow dress made her an easy target, she replied, “When Ninoy died, I lost my fear.” From there, yellow began appearing in everything associated with the revolution: T-shirts, banners, flags, caps, and even toilet paper sported the common color.

More and more elements of the military and government backed Aquino, and the entire movement culminated in a three-day rally of some two million participants. Eventually, support for Aquino reached a point where Marcos was forced to cede control of the government and leave the country. Aquino was elected president in 1986. During the entire revolution, not a single shot was fired. Though formally called the People’s Party Revolution, another popular name is the Yellow Revolution.

3White’s Role In Combat

In the Second Punic War between the Roman and Carthaginian Empires, a Carthaginian ship was reported to display white wool and olive branches to signal its wish to surrender. This practice continued into 69, where a white banner was again used to broadcast a wish to parley in the Second Battle of Cremona. Soon, the white flag became well established in the Western world as a sign of surrender. Interestingly, the practice also arose independent of the West in the first to third century in China during the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Though often used as a sign of surrender, the white flag has also been used to indicate non-combatants, such as medieval Heralds, who carried white standards to make sure they weren’t mistaken for soldiers. The white flag has become so predominate in the world stage that many treaties and countries have forbade its misuse and defined such abuse as a war crime.

2A Morbid Brown Creates Cultural Heritage

Masterpieces of art such as The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones and Martin Drolling’s L’interieur d’une cuisine share a disturbing fact in common. Both were painted using dead people.

By the 16th century, the export and misuse of mummies had become a thriving business. The corpses were used as attractions or ground into powder for medicine or even as paint. “Mummy Brown” was used for centuries and was still produced even as recently as 1964. As a paint, it received mixed reviews. Some claimed, “it flows from the brush with a delightful freedom and evenness” and provides “thin films that are extremely lovely and enjoyable,” while others held the practice to be distasteful.

Those in disgust seemed to be the majority. When Edward Burne-Jones learned of the grisly origin of his paint, his widow reported, “he left us at once, hastened to the studio, and returning with the only tube he had, insisted on our giving it decent burial there and then. So a hole was bored in the green grass at our feet, and we all watched it put safely in, and the spot was marked by one of the girls planting a daisy root above it.”

1A Green Poisoned Napoleon Bonaparte

The cause of Napoleon’s death has been hotly debated. Was it a stomach ulcer? Arsenic exposure? Evidence for the latter can be found when studying samples of the wallpaper of Longwood, Napoleon’s prison home while in exile.

In the 18th century, a new pigment of green was devised and named Scheele’s Green, after its creator. This pigment made heavy use of arsenic and was present in the wallpaper Napoleon was surrounded by in his final years. Both samples of the wallpaper and Napoleon’s own hair have been tested and found to contain arsenic. In a high temperature, damp room, the wallpaper could well release enough arsenic to account for what was found in Napoleon’s hair, but we’ll never say for sure if it was the color green that killed him.

Believe it or not, one-fifth of the 21st century is already behind us, and the past 20 years were pretty intense. While there were plenty of social and political changes across the world, one industry that has seen significant advancement is medicine.

The first 20 years of the 21st century have seen advancements in the way we identify, catalog, and treat a plethora of diseases. This list highlights the 10 most significant medical advances made in the first fifth of the 21st century.

10 Prosthetics Have Gone Bionic

The Six Million Doller Man made it seem like bionic implants and prostheses were an impossible future. That show aired in the 1970s, and the future is now! Of course, people aren’t transformed from crippled astronauts into superheroes, but bionic prosthetics have gone from science fiction to reality.

It will be a while before these limbs look and feel like biological appendages. Still, advancements are being made towards that goal. Modern prostheses can function better than past versions. Some even make it possible for the wearer to manipulate them with their minds.

By placing electrodes on various parts of the skull, a person can manipulate their bionic prostheses by thinking. The technology needs some work, but it’s been proven to function with some patients being able to open and close a bionic hand to pick up and manipulate objects.

The technology has gone beyond manipulation to make it possible to “feel” with bionic fingers. Other advancements include bionic lenses that restore vision. Work is being done to create implantable neuroprosthetic devices that can control computers, so expect this technology to improve and advance over the next 20 years.

9 HIV/AIDS Treatment Has Taken The Fight To The Virus

For years, it seemed that HIV was a virus that couldn’t be defeated. When it infected someone, it was only a matter of time before they developed AIDS, which would ultimately claim the patient’s life. For the latter part of the 20th century, that was typically the result of an infection.

There were antiviral medications patients could take, but they were numerous, and each came with side effects. This made it difficult for patients to stay on schedule, and eventually, the virus won out. That began to change in 2006 with the release of Atripla.

The medicine combined three antiretroviral drugs into a single dose, making it much easier and less damaging to take. In 2013, Stribild was released, and it combined four HIV antiretroviral medications into a single dose. Medicines and treatments continued to improve over the first two decades of the 21st century.

In 2017 and 2019, two new medications, Juluce and Dovato, were released, drastically improving treatment options for patients. Those two breakthrough drugs made it possible for every patient with HIV to be on an effective single-dose therapy, helping to reduce the number of HIV patients who develop AIDS while drastically reducing healthcare costs.

8 We Cracked The Human Genome

In 1990, an international scientific research project began the arduous task of cracking the human genome. The idea was to determine the base pairs that make up human DNA. These would then be mapped to better understand the human genome, which would aid in medical research and treatment.

In 2000, the Human Genome Project released a rough draft of the human genome. It was the first time in history that people could read a complete set of human genetic information. Three years later, a final draft was released as the program shut down, having delivered on its promise to map the three billion nucleotides contained in our DNA.

The finished project presented a mosaic of various individuals, and the data derived from the study has been instrumental in furthering our understanding of human genetics. The project made it possible to map an individual human genome easier and relatively inexpensively. This makes it possible to identify disease-causing mutations before they manifest in a patient.

Genomics advancements have furthered cancer research and treatment with the creation of more targeted drugs. Additionally, we now know the genetic basis of nearly 5,000 conditions, which is a significant improvement over the 60 we understood before we cracked the human genome.

7 Advances In Genetic Engineering

Science fiction tells us that genetic engineering results in the creation of monsters. In reality, it offers a means of correcting congenital defects and mutations that result in disease. The most well-known process for accomplishing this is CRISPR, or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.

Essentially, CRISPR is a means of targeted editing a living organism’s genes. It can also be used to create agricultural products, genetically modified organisms, and control pests and pathogens. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for developing the technique.

The use of CRISPR genomic modification remains controversial, but it has been shown to be effective in various medical applications. Research in biomedicine shows that CRISPR can treat cancer, progeria, sickle cell disease, hemophilia, Huntington’s disease, and many more diseases resulting from a person’s genes.

In 2020, CRISPR was used effectively to treat glioblastoma and metastatic ovarian cancer. Further research and development will likely yield more advancements in treating various diseases, pathogens, and more. Research is being conducted worldwide to advance CRISPR into various therapies, suggesting it will become commonplace in the future.

6 Heart Disease Is No Longer A Death Sentence

Before the turn of the century, doctors could do very little for a patient who suffered a heart attack. Treatment typically consisted of providing a drip of morphine and lidocaine, which was believed to prevent irregular heartbeats. Most patients didn’t recover, but these days, deaths from heart disease have dropped by 40%.

A lot of that is due to the development of new medicines, including Lipitor, Mevacor, Crestor, and Simvastatin, which all work to slow the progression of atherosclerosis (plaque and fatty material buildup in the arteries). With those drugs, fewer patients are getting to the point of having a heart attack.

Still, heart attacks do occur, but when they do, they are treated very differently than they were in the past. Today, it’s all about speed. Once a patient arrives at the hospital, a clot can be destroyed with drugs. A genetically engineered tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) can bust up a clot, restoring blood flow.

Patients who require surgery are treated differently from the past, resulting in far fewer deaths from a cardiac infarction. The improvement stems from a 1998/2000 goal set by the American Heart Association, which wanted to reduce cardiac deaths by 25% by 2010. In 2008, the goal was achieved, and by 2020, a 40% reduction was reached.

5 Stem Cell Research & Application Made Leaps & Bounds

The use of stem cells in research isn’t anything new, as the technology to derive them from embryos was developed in the early 1980s. Since then, technology has advanced significantly, and medical research and treatment applications have hit the ground running in the 21st century.

Stem divide to form “daughter cells,” which can then turn into new stem cells or become any other specialized cell in the body. Under the right laboratory conditions (or in the body), stem cells can replace damaged cells. Potentially, they can be used to grow new organs.

The applications of the latter are promising, as any organs grown from a patient’s own cells wouldn’t require a lifetime of anti-rejection medication. Furthermore, the organ would theoretically be accepted without a problem, reducing the risk of transplantation, which is already a complex procedure.

Other applications include treating against disease and genetic conditions. In one study, manipulated bone marrow cells were transplanted into two seven-year-old boys. This stopped the progress of a fatal brain disease called adrenoleukodystrophy. Research into other applications is promising, suggesting stem cell therapy is truly the future of medicine.

4 Targeted Cancer Therapies Are Improving Survival Rates

For years, the primary method to treat a patient with cancer was through chemotherapy and radiation therapy. While these often worked, they did so by attacking cancer cells and healthy cells, which presents its own set of problems. Over the past decade, new techniques have been developed that make it possible to treat cancer more effectively.

Targeted therapies make it possible to eliminate many of the dangerous side effects of chemo and radiation therapies by going after the cancer cells without the danger of harming healthy cells. These targeted therapies work in several ways, but for the most part, they do the following:

-They identify and kill cancer cells directly.
-They interfere with the spread of cancerous cells, blocking the ones responsible for tumor growth.

The past decade has seen FDA approval for more than 25 new medicines that have shown an effectiveness in treating cancer patients through targeted therapy. The drugs are either small-molecule or monoclonal antibodies, which target specific cancer cells’ functions of how they divide, grow, and spread.

The technology behind targeted therapy is still relatively new, so advances are continuing around the world. It doesn’t mean we’ve beaten cancer, but we have advanced in the fight against one of humanity’s most insidious enemies.

3 Nanomedicine Left Science-Fiction Behind And Became A Reality

Sci-Fi has long been the domain of nanotechnology, and for a good reason. Programming machines smaller than cells is fantastical in nature, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. To be clear, that’s not what modern nanomedicine is, but the impact of what it has become suggests the future may be devoid of side effects.

Current nanomedicine is centered mainly around drug delivery. Instead of programming impossibly tiny robots, nanomedicine works by employing nanoparticles that are specifically engineered to target specific cells in targeted drug delivery. In short, it takes medicine directly to the affected cells, which reduces the total amount of drugs required.

Additionally, nanoparticles avoid healthy cells, which limits side effects. As the technology develops, it could reduce side effects in targeted therapies, improving drug effectiveness and survival rates.

Nanotechnology-based drugs are already on the market. Drugs like Abraxane, Onivyde, Rapamune, and others have improved anti-rejection and cancer treatments. Research is ongoing, and further advances in the treatment of HIV and cancer are looking to be the way of the future.

2 It Is Now Possible To Print Body Parts

Fabricating a body part from raw materials has long been the subject of science fiction, but that’s not the case any longer. Since 3D printing technology has advanced over the past two decades, new methods in creating implantable body parts have emerged. The current technology makes it possible to combine cell types with polymers to create living, functional tissues.

The technology behind this is still in the early phases of development, and it isn’t widely available at this time. Still, studies have made significant leaps and bounds via the technology. By 2020, researchers had successfully printed and implanted bionic eyes, hearts, skin, bionic ears, elastic bones, ovaries, and antibacterial teeth.

Because it’s still in the research and development phase, these items and organs have been successfully implanted into mice and other animals. Still, the technology is incredibly promising. As it develops, it should be possible to utilize a specialized 3D printer to recreate organs that can be implanted into patients.

Bioprinting and biotechnology companies are working hard to recreate everything from blood vessels to ears and whatever is needed in the future. It may eventually be possible to print a person’s heart to replace a damaged one without having to wait for months or even years on a transplant list.

1 RNA Vaccines Left The Lab And Took The Fight To The Virus

On their own, the vaccines developed to fight against COVID-19 are a fantastic medical achievement. Simply getting them through all the necessary red tape is noteworthy. Still, there’s far more going on behind the scenes than the average person knows because the technology that went into creating the vaccines represents a significant advancement.

The vaccines were made as quickly as they were, in part, because the research was already underway to develop the technology of RNA vaccines. Traditional vaccines work by placing an inactive version of the whole virus into the body. The immune system responds by learning how to attack and deal with it.

Another way to fight a virus is to deliver the nucleic acid that encodes the protein. The person’s immune system reacts by making the necessary protein to fight the virus. RNA vaccinations inject the nucleic acid that codes for the proteins that the cells need to make, delivering the “instructions” the body needs to fight off the virus . . . in other words, the vaccine changes the host’s DNA.

RNA vaccine technology is relatively new, and the COVID-19 vaccines are the first to make it out of the testing phase and into patients’ bodies. Thus far, it’s appeared successful, but it’s only the beginning. Further research and advancements in the technology could battle against viruses that have been difficult in the past, making RNA vaccines one of the most important medical advancements of the 21st century.