When you enter a dark room all that’s needed to light it up instantly is to flick a switch. The convenience of electricity is something we take for granted, and its everyday use owes much to the scientists who experimented with, and tamed, this natural phenomenon. But perhaps the strangest result of any historical experiment was observed by Andrew Crosse (1784–1855) of Somerset.

The notion that electricity could play a role in the creation of life dates back centuries. It’s long been thought that the origin of life on earth got a helping hand by lightning electrical discharges, and Mary Shelley in her 1818 novel Frankenstein wrote of a scientist able to create life from dead body parts using electricity. There have been suggestions that Crosse inspired her novel. Though that’s considered unlikely, he did experiments in which mites seemed to appear as a by-product of growing crystals!