pacemaker
I heard an interesting story today from someone involved in heart surgery research, a story about the first battery powered pacemaker to be used on a human. I don't know if any aspect of this is apocryphal or not, but I can tell you that the source is pretty reliable, and parts of this story are widely repeated on the Intertubes, so they must be true.
The original pacemaker was, of course, developed here at the University of Minnesota. In fact, open heard surgery was pioneered here and a lot of other heart related research. This is also where the first (and only) human-grown heart was…