The world’s first successful limb reattachment is a fascinating story of science and human ingenuity

On May 23, 1962, 12-year-old small pitcher Everette “Eddy” Woodrow Knowles III survived a traumatic accident that would change the medical world.

On that sunny spring day in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Eddy was train hopping — hitching a ride by grabbing the side of a moving train car — when his arm was torn from his body just below the shoulder. Eddy couldn’t remember the details of what exactly happened, but a local store clerk named Alice Chmielewski sprang into action and applied pressure to the wound while another bystander called emergency services. In just seven minutes, he arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital, where the medical team attempted something unprecedented that had been in the works for more than 30,000 years.

In the latter Popular science video we tell the incredible story of what happened next and how everything aligned perfectly to make history.

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