Infertility was the great curse of many ages. For various medical reasons, a small number of couples were just unable to conceive, and no real medical remedies existed to help them. So it went until the mid-20th century, when scientists began making headway into developing artificial means of insemination. At first these means required fertilization of the eggs outside of the body before implantation: this was the so-called in-vitro fertilization method. By 1983, doctors developed a procedure for fertilizing an egg inside another woman before transferring it to the mother who would carry the child and give birth.

On this day, February 3rd, in 1984, the first birth from the embryo-transfer procedure took place in a hospital in California. The mother was only identified as 30 years of age and very happy about her baby.

Some 150,000 births from embryo transfers were recorded over the next 25 years, but ethical issues remain. There are still open questions about the propriety of payments to the women conceiving, and what effect the knowledge of the method of their birth would have on the children.