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Thursday
In 1887, the English manufacturer John Dickenson introduced paper napkins at his company’s annual dinner. In 1902, a patent is obtained for barbituric acid - hope for insomniacs. The German chemist Emil Fischer and his collaborator Joseph von Mering modified a class of drugs originally synthesized in 1864 in a way that made them effective as sedatives and hypnotics. Fischer and Mering realized that their new drug, "diethyl barbituric acid," or barbital, was a sedative.