April 6

There are few events on par with the perfection of the polio vaccine by Louis Pasteur. The same may be said of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s landing on the surface of the moon. Among those events of similar significance, one occurred on the 6th in 1938 when Roy J. Plunkett, a DuPont chemist charged with developing a new refrigerant serendipitously discovered polytetrafluoroethylene (heh?). It was immediately re-named Teflon, so that it would fit properly onto the label for a cooking utensil. In recognition of Plunkett’s contributions to Western Civilization and life as we know it generally, in 1973 Plunkett was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame. In addition (will the joy would never end?) in 1985, Roy made it into the Inventors Hall of Fame. On the downside, Plunkett also perfected the gasoline additive tetra-ethyl lead, bequeathing to us an entirely new set of problems.