The greatest moment in science. Almost.

It was 20 years ago today that the world of science went crazy. Or as crazy as someone can go with a test tube in each hand. Which, as it turned out, is very crazy.

At a press conference at the University of Utah on 23 March 1989, two chemists told a stunned world that its energy worries were over. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that, with little more than some special water and two metal electrodes, they could harness the power of the sun in a laboratory flask. They had created a star in a jar.

The implications were extraordinary. Limitless energy. An end to the domination of the fossil-fuel industry. World peace. Cold fusion, as the effect became known, would save the day.
Guardian