10 Everyday Inventions That Exist Thanks To War

An obstinate truth of warfare is that your soldiers can't be out inflicting death and misery on the enemy if they're too ill to walk. This was a problem the United States faced in the Spanish-American War in 1898, when a good proportion of their casualties were inflicted not by Spanish bullets but by outbreaks of yellow fever on the contested island of Cuba.

It was the army that decided to find out just what was causing yellow fever to spread so eagerly between its soldiers. The US Army Yellow Fever Commission conducted experiments in Cuba to see how the disease was transmitted.

One member of the commission, Jesse William Lazear, performed a celebrated act of medical sacrifice when he allowed a mosquito to bite him to see if he got yellow fever. He did, and subsequently died, helping to prove the little bloodsucking jerks were the transmission vector.

This breakthrough would not have happened when it did if it was not for the army's need to make the most of every soldier's killing potential.