Roentgen discovers X-rays

On the evening of 8 November 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg, noticed a fluorescent screen glowing across his laboratory while he was working with a covered cathode-ray tube. He discovered that the unknown rays, which he called X-rays, passed through paper, wood and flesh but not bone or metal. Weeks later he made an image of his wife's hand showing the bones and her wedding ring. Within months, doctors used X-rays across the world to find fractures and bullets. Roentgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

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