Mr Wurzelbacher "Joe The Plumber" was seized on by Republican Senator John McCain as a real-life Joe Six-pack, he was mentioned more than a dozen times in the third and final presidential debate between Mr McCain and Mr Obama last night, an ordinary man chasing the American dream, who had challenged Barack Obama's tax plans in a chance encounter.

The first direct blood transfusion of World War I was performed by Dr Émile Jeanbrau at Biarritz Hospital. Isidore Colas (a patient recovering from injury) gave his blood from an artery through a short silver tube to a seriously wounded soldier he did not know. He saved Cpl. Henri Legrain of 45th Infantry Corps of the French Army, who had arrived from the front and needed blood during a two-hour surgery. Similar blood transfusions saved a number of soldiers' lives in the campaign hospitals by the end of the year. Some attempts failed because blood type matching was not yet fully understood. The ABO blood types had been discovered by Dr Karl Landsteiner in 1901. Blood transfusion between humans was tried by Dr James Blundell as early as 1818 with an apparatus he invented.