British researchers Andrew Bell, Dr. David Brown and Dr. Nicholas Terrett were working on an affliction a lot more prosaic than erectile dysfunction. They had developed a new set of compounds they though could help sufferers of angina and other diseases of the heart. Phase I clinical trials went very interestingly — their drug had negligible effects on angina, but did produce what Viagra produces today.

On this day, March 27, in 1998, the sale of sildenafil citrate, marketed under the brand name “Viagra” was greenlighted by the Food and Drug Administration. It became the first oral treatment approved for erectile dysfunction, and it was offered for sale in the United States later that year.

Some dispute remains over who can rightly be considered the “inventor” of Viagra. Peter Dunn and Albert Wood were the Pfizer employees who took sildenafil and converted it into pill form. Their name is on the second of Viagra patents — one that is scheduled to expire, incidentally, on March 27, 2012