William Ramsay discovers krypton
1898: Two British researchers discover the element krypton.
It's real, but it would inspire fantastic fiction.
William Ramsay, a Scot, and his student Morris Travers, an Englishman, were
searching for gases in the helium family. They boiled a sample
of liquefied air until they got rid of the water, oxygen, nitrogen, helium and
argon. Then they placed the residue in a Plücker tube connected to an induction
coil. It produced a spectrum with bright yellow and green lines.