On February 28, 1953 in the Eagle Pub, James Watson and Francis Crick first spoke publicly about their discovery of the structure of the most fundamental building block of life, deoxyribonucleic acid — or DNA.

The discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure was the culmination of years of research by Watson, Crick, and many others — most notably Rosalind Franklin, the researcher whose x-ray crystallography images proved to be the turning point in Watson and Crick’s work, but who was never properly acknowledged by the pair.

The first public mention of the discovery came when Crick interrupted lunch at The Eagle pub in Cambridge to announce that he and Watson had “discovered the secret of life.”