Because he was black, the noted surgeon Richard Charles Drew was not allowed to donate blood to America's first blood bank following its opening in New York City in 1940. The facility's designer? Richard Charles Drew.

[According to some accounts, Drew later died following an accident because he was denied a blood transfusion. Fortunately, this embellishment of the story is an urban myth.]

[The first blood transfusion in history was performed by Louis XIV's physician Jean Baptiste Denis. Eight ounces of lamb's blood were injected into the veins of a dying boy, temporarily reviving him.]