On May 23, 1962, 12-year-old little league 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 trainhopping—hitching a ride by gripping the side of a moving train car—when his arm was torn from his body right below the shoulder. Eddy couldn’t remember the details of exactly what happened, but a local store clerk named Alice Chmielewski jumped into action, applying pressure to the wound while another bystander phoned emergency services. In just seven minutes, he arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital where the medical team attempted something unprecedented and more than 30,000 years in the making.
In the latest Popular Science video, we tell the incredible story of what happened next and how everything aligned perfectly to make history.
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