i came across this & hadn't heard of it before. it's pretty interesting.


Life itself could easily be considered one of our greatest mysteries. Nobody knows exactly how it works and certainly nobody knows how to create it. Or do they?

What did Andrew do?

In 1837, a little known scientist named Andrew Crosse created life in his personal laboratory. Although it was accomplished entirely by accident, Andrew carefully documented his procedures and several members of the London Electrical Society were able to duplicate the incident including the infamous Michael Faraday.

Surely a discovery such as this would turn the world on end and make a person an instant hero? Although the entire world did take notice and Andrew was entered in the Dictionary of National Biography, he was far from a hero. In fact, Andrew became one of the most hated men in England, an unfortunate notoriety that would soon destroy him.

Who was Andrew Crosse?

It is well known that Crosse lectured in England during the early 1800's on topics concerning his electrical experimentation. In fact, as a strange side note, there's a pretty good chance that Mary Shelly, author of the book Frankenstein, attended one of Crosse's lectures. At the time of this particular lecture, it's quite possible that Andrew Crosse already had succeeded in creating life or at least came close to it. But, it wasn't until 1837 that the world would be stunned by Crosse's success.

The Experiments

In Crosse's electrical experiments, he was supposedly attempting to create glass crystals. As Colin Wilson explains in his book The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

He made glass out of grounded flint and potassium carbonate, and dissolved it in hydrochloric acid. His idea was then to allow this fluid to dry, little by little, through a lump of porous stone which had been 'electrified' by a battery, and to see whether it formed crystals.

Crystals were not formed but Crosse noticed a curious side effect. On the porous stone he noticed many small white lumps. He then decided to let the experiment continue. After a week he noted hand like extensions growing out of the white lumps. Later he could tell that they were legs. After four weeks the creatures could easily been seen under a magnifying glass walking around. They appeared to be small insect like creatures. Thinking that possibly insect eggs had contaminated his controlled experiment, he decided to give it another shot and this time carefully control the influence of outside variables.

This time Crosse use air tight containers. Beforehand, all the components were completely sterilized using hot alcohol. The electrical wire entered the sealed container through a glass stopper. The glass was made at a temperature that would melt iron and distilled water was used to mix the concoction, consisting of iron sulfate, copper sulfate, and copper nitrate. Finally, the battery was connected and the slow dripping process began. After a few months Crosse once again noticed the insect like creatures crawling around inside the controlled environment. He was then certain that he had indeed created life.

Ecstatic with his discovery, he immediately documented the results and quickly sent them to the London Electrical Society. Other engineers repeated the experiment with similar success. Soon the entire world was aware of Crosse's experiments and his personal living hell began...

The Aftermath

Clergymen and others all throughout Europe were shocked at the blasphemous atrocity. People closed their doors in his face. Merchants refused to serve him and the local church gathered on his doorstep to perform and exorcism of this demonic beast. Crosse tried to explain that the 'was in humble and lowly reverence of that Great Being' but the world refused to listen. He was an outcast and quickly withdrew from public sight.

The great Michael Faraday defended Crosse before the Royal Institution and claimed that he himself was able to duplicate the experiment and create the strange creatures. All this was to no avail. Crosse died 18 years later a lonely and bitter man.

What we know today

The precise details required to conduct the experiment are not clear in our present day but it is generally accepted that several persons were successful in duplicating Crosse's experiment. It is also known that many more failed...

Those that succeeded described the creatures as tiny 'mites' and even suggested naming the new species Acari Crossii. Detractors insisted that some sort of contamination had occurred and the creatures must have been some sort of common insect.

Time, as is often the case, has blurred the exact method needed to conduct this experiment successfully. Hence, we may never know the how and why the creatures were created or if they indeed were created. But could it be possible that Crosse stumbled across the primordial soup that evolutionist theorize was needed to create the world's first life form...

That is too bad... I am so curious about those creatures. I wonder what they looked like and if their DNA was similar to existing life?

The very first life forms were bacteria which then evolved into more complex multi cellular life forms.

To me personally this is more of an urban legend than something that actually happened.

I came across this story a while back,http://www.rexresearch.com/crosse/crosse.htm this explain's in a bit more detail, very Frankenstenian Why not??

It could be an urban legend - Who knows for sure. However, those legends originate from real events. So whatever he was working on (legend or not), if it was enough to turn the entire towne against him... It must have been amazing!

yeah - the article makes it sound as if the lady that wrote "Frankenstein" got the idea from this dude's experiments. if that be the case, maybe there's something to it.

Mary Shelley? You could be on to something. They would be sort of contemporary.

thanks for the link. that is a very interesting article. a long read, but very interesting. it has a drawing of the insects also - very cool.

Hard to believe and yes I would have closed the door on his foot and in his face too.

I have found, to no great surprise, conflicting information about who was able to replicate Crosse's experiment.

Apparently W.H Weeks was undertaken to repeat the experiment by the L.E.S., but his results were never published so reports that he too created this 'life' seem to be just hearsay. Faraday is not reported (despite accounts that he did in popular stories) to have repeated the experiment.

Later scientists did try to repeat the experiment but were unsuccessful. However it is not known if they had the correct conditions under which Crosse observed his 'discovery'.

The Wiki site seems to indicate the life forms were a contamination and not a spontaneous creation. This was also, apparently, Crosse's own concern.

why??? it's not like he was trying to play god or anything. he was doing an experiment & it just happened. he wasn't trying to "create life". most great discoveries are by accident.

I also doubt that the life from one would try to create would have been a creepy little mite like that!

Or maybe it didn't just happen and the guy lied about his 'discovery'. Or maybe none of this happened and this whole story started out as a rumor by his students etc. and got passed down and what have you.

Crosse talked about this before even revealing his supposed discovery to others...

This whole thing smells like it was a hoax and since his discovery was never validated nor confirmed at the time by other researchers. The fact he tried to make glass out of potassium carbonate and flint tell me that his experiment never really happened as the primary component in glass in silica and this was never used.