3. Ether was Invented at the Naval Hospital

Inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard abandoned hospitals

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Naval Hospital (or the Naval Annex), once one of the oldest naval hospitals in the U.S., was built from 1830 to 1838, and decommissioned in the 1970s. It was at this site that naval surgeon DR. E.R. Squibb developed the first aesthetic ethers for use in surgery. He would later go on to establish his own pharmaceutical company outside the Yard in 1857, which provided medical supplies for the Union Army during the Civil War.