Also:

  human dissection (grave robbing)
  translating the Bible into English
  silk production outside of China (death penalty for exporting worm eggs)
  rubber production in Asia (seeds smuggled out of Brazil)
  the Underground Railroad
  heliocentrism
  AIDS treatment (see Dallas Buyers Club)
  Needle exchange programs for IV drug users
  Ridesharing/airbnb/napster (obvious ones)
  SF gay marriage licenses (in defiance of CA law)

> The process of chlorinating water was first done illegally.

I tried to find a source on this but it doesn't seem to be true? The first chapter of this book describes the history of chlorination: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Chlorina... (which is a source Wikipedia cites) and it doesn't appear to mention anything about illegally chlorinating water. After looking in that book I asked ChatGPT to find a source for the claim, and it reported the claim was false. Chlorination was initially controversial but I can't find anything claiming it was illegal?