Industrial Revolution child workers wages machine operation

Factory children earned a small fraction of adult men's wages

10–20% of an adult man's wage

During the early Industrial Revolution, children in some factories could earn only 10–20% as much as adult men even when they produced a similar amount of work. Their low wages made them attractive workers for factory owners.

A Japanese surgeon used general anesthesia decades before ether surgery

In 1804, Japanese surgeon Hanaoka Seishū performed breast surgery using a herbal anesthetic preparation that rendered his patient unconscious. This was decades before ether anesthesia became established in Western surgery. Hanaoka's method was developed within a different medical tradition and did not become the basis of modern inhaled anesthesia, but it demonstrates that surgical anesthesia has more than one historical origin.

≈4.3 million Suns

Stars reveal a giant black hole at our galaxy’s center

More than 100 stars have been tracked orbiting something invisible at the center of the Milky Way. Their motion shows that about 4.3 million Suns’ worth of mass is packed into an extremely small region, providing strong evidence for a supermassive black hole.

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Industrial Revolution child workers wages machine operation

Factory children earned a small fraction of adult men's wages

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