After the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 , Many Civil War soldiers’ lives were saved by a phenomenon they called ‘Angel’s Glow.’ The soldiers who lay in the mud for two rainy days had wounds that began to glow in the dark.
The men had no explanation for the strange glow, but doctors soon discovered that soldiers who had reported seeing their wounds glow had a higher chance of survival than soldiers who did not. Not only that, they also seemed to have lower rates of infection. Moreover, their injuries appeared to heal much faster than their non-glowing counterparts.
In 2001, 17-year-old high school student, Bill Martin and his friend, Jonathan Curtis, won an international science fair by discovering that the soldiers had been so cold that their bodies created the perfect conditions for growing a bioluminescent bacteria, Photorhabdus luminescens, which ultimately destroyed the bad bacteria that could have killed them.
