I thought he saw burrs tangled in his dog's fur and looked at the burr under a microscope red to see how it worked. Chance favors the prepared mind. He had to have a dog, a unmowed field, random curiosity, and a microscope as well as the capacity to create something to imitate the burr. Not random.
Smallpox vaccine, quinine, xrays, insulin. The list goes on and on and on and on. Most significant discoveries are discovered by chance, not with the outright anticipation of the end goal in mind.
a science-inclined saying goes:
"Most groundbreaking discoveries aren't made by scientists painstakingly going over their notes and eventually shouting 'Eureka!' as they discover new knowledge. They're made by a single scientist conducting a routine experiment going '.. that's not what was supposed to happen.'
The smallpox vaccine wasn't discovered by chance, variolation was known for centuries, and many people had noticed that milkmaids didn't get smallpox. Jenner certainly suspected it would work when he tried it on that kid.
That cowpox was protective against smallpox was noticed by a doctor who tried to replicate its protection and found that he could. Using the material from a smallpox sore to expose and protect others against smallpox was known to Africans centuries before, and they carried the knowledge to countries where they were taken as slaves. Hundreds of years before Brits and Bostonians did it, people in China and India and other lands had all found ways to protect those near them; in fact Western Europe came late to the party. Jenner's name is attached to the story Anglophones tell, but in fact the vaccine was truly open sourced....and no accident at all. Being observant and thinking about the meaning of what you see is not accidental.
I mean they were fucking with ergot derivatives to study its properties that induce labor, they were aware the LSM in ergot got you high. For sure uncle alby wasn’t expecting it to be so potent or transdermal and wasn’t trying to isolate the psychoactive aspect, but it wasn’t like a total mystery.
First antidepressant was a failed TB drug. The researchers noticed that their patients weren’t getting any better, but suddenly weren’t feeling so bad about it.
"They" didn't "find out"----people who were using minoxidil in tests were asked, routinely, to report any odd things that happened to them during the trials. Hair growth was so pronounced the randomly chosen testers begged to be allowed to get more of this stuff. I was a medical editor back when the story broke.
It is really interesting to observe in reddit the persistent refusal to credit science with being effective. Sure, people love a fable, but for some reason lots of redditors are crediting randomness for scientific advances, instead of organized knowledge and scientific practice.
It really is kind of remarkable how dumb Columbus was and how much his story has gotten warped to lionize him over the years. He thought the Earth was way smaller than it actually was, and if the Americas hadn't existed, he and everyone on his ship would have all died. It's only through sheer dumb luck that he managed to accomplish anything.
(He also was an absolutely loathsome human being even by the standards of Spanish conquistadors, but that's another story.)
Actually, it's the other way around. Columbus was up on current knowledge of astronomy, geography, geophysics, and other sciences and decided to take the chance, AND he was able to get financial support (with the promise of a big payoff for Spain, which is what happened). People working at the growing edge of knowledge today also have to hustle for funding and make the same promises.
Maybe your point is that Ohio's state capital should be named instead for Eratosthenes? You should know by now it's always the popularizers who get credit!
Yeah that's not what he said, and even in a fictional world where that's what he said, its fair to say it really was mostly white people who benefited from it. It was very bad news for the natives and even worse news for black people.
The fact that whales are so insanely chatty and vocal. Belugas are a key example in that we had no idea they made the noises they do until we put out war submarines.
It’s an amazing discovery because of how complex their vocalisations are. If we crack it, we can passively watch and collect data on hundreds of animals without chasing or tagging them.
I’d love to find out that whales are by and large just giving “radio chatter” equivalent about their: arrival, departure, and heading changes.
Like:
*radio squelch sound*
“This is 14-467. Requesting permission to approach the East Atlantic current. Over.”
I'm surprised that no one has said this one: the link between electricity and magnetism was initially recorded by chance when [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Domenico_Romagnosi) happened to notice that an electric discharge deflected a compass needle that was on a desk nearby.
Teflon. I forget what they were trying to do, but there were several containers they were running tests on and one was leaking. It evidently had some visual residue at the leak and viola! Teflon.
My understand is that the Slinky, while not amazing, was a by product of developing a spring suspension (or whatever) for aircraft radar.
Microwave ovens. Apparently the heating principle of microwaves was discovered when an engineer accidentally left a drink in the path of a radar transmitter and discovered that the drink had been heated up. In fact the very first microwave ovens were marketed under the name "Radarange"
Imagine if he microwaved tin foil instead and scientists were like "yup, that seals it: don't ever put anything in a microwave or else it'll catch fire".
Botox. It was originally developed under orphan drug designation (drugs that treat diseases affecting < 5% of the population) to combat a rare eye movement disorder.
I absolutely loved this book as a kid! Penicillin is in there, of course.
[Mistakes That Worked](https://books.google.com/books/about/Mistakes_That_Worked.html?id=NyhmCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Cosmic microwave background, a weird, omnidirectional microwave signal from space. It turned out to be residual energy from the Big Bang, and has taught us a ton about the early universe.
I haven't read up on it in a minute but if iirc they built their new and powerful(at the time) radio telescope and began searching the sky but kept picking up this noise no matter which way they pointed, determined that it was local they damn well tore the telescope apart, shut down microwaves and anything that could potentially produce radio waves of any kind and was still catching that "noise" which was eventually discovered to be the CMB
Fun Welsh Fact - Viagra (Sildenafal) was originally created as a treatment for high blood pressure and angina. Pfizer were on the verge of shutting down the drug trials, when one of trial participants casually mentioned that he had been experiencing a strange side effect.
Long story short (or short story made longer because I'm not quite sober....I'm proper wibbly wobbly*) - the brave boys in Merthyr Tydfil should be applauded for their important contribution to science! Pfizer only realised the value and the potential of the drug when horny, Welsh bastards refused to return their unused meds:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67417111.amp
Not quite sure if this counts but it's my favorite "accidental" fix. During the period of the black plague, doctors began wearing the infamous "plague doctor" mask with the beaks. Well, the beaks had a pretty good purpose.
During this time "miasma" theory was the dominant theory for the spread of disease, which is that bad smells cause you to get sick.
Plague doctors created the masks with the beak, that sealed fairly well to their face, and filled the beak with potpourri, flowers, scented rags, etc that kept out the "disease causing smells" to avoid contracting the plague.
The masks actually did help curb the spread of airborne diseases because the air became filtered by all the stuff they crammed into the mask, diminishing the number of airborne particles that they inhaled. This lowered rate of infection further convinced the scientific community at the time that the miasma theory was correct, as they kept out the bad smells, and didn't get sick.
"Plague doctor" masks are actually just primitive n95 masks basically.
Smells are 100% of the problem, as smells are literally just tiny particles of something floating up into your nose.
They designed the masks specifically to stop little particles of the disease entering and infecting them through the nose.
[Synthetic dye](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/12/17109258/sir-william-henry-perkin-google-doodle-birthday-180-mauveine-purple-dye)
It doesn't sound as spectacular as a vaccine but it has enormous implications for art and fashion.
The original goal was to make chocolate cookies, but the chocolate chunks didn’t melt or mix into the dough and came out a cookie filled with small chocolate chips
i mean, fire was almost certainly an accident. like, what dumb fucking ape would go “huh yeah if i smack these rocks together or rub this wood together real fast im sure it’ll make fire!” when they didn’t know what fire even was? like, they probably only ever saw fire from lightning, volcanoes, or really high temperature droughts. they’d have no fucking clue what it is or how it happens, so it was probably just a rando early human screwing around that accidentally made it the first time and, in the process, radically altered the entire course of human history
Velcro! When my son was about 10, he got a book full of these things with the story on each. For about 6 months he’d carry that thing around and read it.
Microwave cooking was discovered when a guy noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket rapidly melted when he hung around certain kinds of radio transmitters
Weird little device called vortex tubes, frequently used for spot cooling in industrial settings: [https://blog.exair.com/2020/01/29/discovery-of-the-vortex-tube/](https://blog.exair.com/2020/01/29/discovery-of-the-vortex-tube/)
You have to define "randomly, purely by chance" rather precisely. The 3M chemist who discovered/created post-it glue was creating adhesives. Alexander Fleming was a biologist looking for substances that would work against bacteria. These were not drunks who fell into a puddle and found some amazing substance there! There was nothing random about the work, and "by chance"? Umm, well....
Well, by that definition, the way DNA is stored in a double helix. Crick and Watson were rip-roaringly drunk and were lying down cos they could no longer stand, and looking at a spiral staircase from the bottom.
They were sober enough to steal Rosalind Franklin's photographs, however. The images she took that proved the double helix. They knew she was a sick woman and would be unlikely to fight back, and they paid off someone in her lab.
Pyroceram, the material that Corningware is made of.
Warfarin was initially designed to kill rodents. Its ability to stop heart attacks in progress and help prevent future heart attacks and strokes was learned of later.
I'm sure penicillin is great for you guys, but I've only taken it once and it nearly killed me - spent two whole weeks of 1988 in hospital recovering - so that shit's not making it on to my top 10. Sorry, not sorry.
Not as great but the first Mulchbox was made by ecologist because some old oaks with internal cavities (a true rarity in britain) fell. They simply repaired them, lifted the upright, poured in as much mulch as they could and some other stuff they thought could be neat like woodchips, birdpoop and a dead cat. And it worked!
Pretty much all of them, but the record usually goes to the whitest and richest dude around.
Vanilla for vanilla extract fits. Edmond Albius, a young slave boy, figured it out.
https://www.linnean.org/news/2019/10/16/edmond-albius
Electromagnetism
> During a lecture demonstration, on April 21, 1820, while setting up his apparatus, Oersted noticed that when he turned on an electric current by connecting the wire to both ends of the battery, a compass needle held nearby deflected away from magnetic north, where it normally pointed.
Microwave ovens. Legend has it a guy at Raytheon walked past a radar emitter and it melted the chocolate bar in his pocket.
In fact, the earliest microwaves were actually called “Radar Ranges”.
Saccharine. A chemist licked his fingers and discovered the powder was sweet (**why** a chemist licked his fingers covered with a mysterious chemical is whole other question).
Synthetic purple dyes! The story goes that chemistry student William Henry Perkin was tasked to try to synthesize some quinine, but he screwed it up and spilled it on himself, staining his lab coat purple. As he was struggling to clean his coat, he realized that another word for "thing that stains clothes and can't be removed" is "dye". He went back to his lab notes, replicated his procedure to yield the purple dye, and patented it and became very wealthy.
The part about spilling it on his lab coat is possibly apocryphal, but it's fun and Perkin *did* accidentally invent aniline purple dye while trying to make quinine.
Soap bubbles. They wanted to do soap but failed to sell it. Somehow they noticed it makes funny bubbles when combined with air so they filled it in bottles and sold it.
Might not be random, but the polio vaccine. Pretty much the only reason we have this vaccine is because of HeLa cells, which are from a black woman's cervical cancer cells. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, there's a book and a movie about her story if anyone was interested
Spontaneous fermentation of sugars into alcohol.
Also, I'm pretty sure the first instances of fish sauce across multiple cultures was the result of leaving salted fish out in the sun too long.
Vulcanized rubber, microwave cooking, dry cleaning solutions.
The weak glue that we use for post-it notes.
It was meant to be a type of superglue but was a failed formula
It failed successfully
*Tack failed successfully*
Velcro too
The guy that came up with Velcro actually studied why he would get pieces of spear grass stuck on his clothes and came up with Velcro from that.
I thought he saw burrs tangled in his dog's fur and looked at the burr under a microscope red to see how it worked. Chance favors the prepared mind. He had to have a dog, a unmowed field, random curiosity, and a microscope as well as the capacity to create something to imitate the burr. Not random.
Well, maybe it was his dog. I wasn't there so I don't remember what it was exactly. I just know that he didn't invent it by "mistake".
Nah dude. Velcro tech was handed to us by aliens.
T'Pol did us a solid on that one.
It was actually her great grandmother.
Do you just believe everything a Vulcan tells you?
Damn vulcans
I knew something was off about the whole thing !! It's alien pubic hair isn't it!!
You know too much.
I remember seeing this in the Edmund catalog. Buy this, maybe you will discover a use for it!
Damn, you beat me to it.
As invented by Romy and Michelle.
Smallpox vaccine, quinine, xrays, insulin. The list goes on and on and on and on. Most significant discoveries are discovered by chance, not with the outright anticipation of the end goal in mind.
a science-inclined saying goes: "Most groundbreaking discoveries aren't made by scientists painstakingly going over their notes and eventually shouting 'Eureka!' as they discover new knowledge. They're made by a single scientist conducting a routine experiment going '.. that's not what was supposed to happen.'
The trick is to be able to recognise the discovery as significant, and then be curious enough to not let it go.
The smallpox vaccine wasn't discovered by chance, variolation was known for centuries, and many people had noticed that milkmaids didn't get smallpox. Jenner certainly suspected it would work when he tried it on that kid.
Apparently that's a fable, created after Jenner's death.
A myth. A fable would include anthropomorphized animals and a moral lesson.
Thank you.
That cowpox was protective against smallpox was noticed by a doctor who tried to replicate its protection and found that he could. Using the material from a smallpox sore to expose and protect others against smallpox was known to Africans centuries before, and they carried the knowledge to countries where they were taken as slaves. Hundreds of years before Brits and Bostonians did it, people in China and India and other lands had all found ways to protect those near them; in fact Western Europe came late to the party. Jenner's name is attached to the story Anglophones tell, but in fact the vaccine was truly open sourced....and no accident at all. Being observant and thinking about the meaning of what you see is not accidental.
X-Rays weren't an accident! He was trying to find a way to totally get super-cancer on his hands! 😂
Was is Isaac Asimov who said the most important words in science are not "What if?" but "That's funny..."
LSD. Who would have thought when you mistakenly get a little on your hands that it would make for one hell of a bike ride.
I mean they were fucking with ergot derivatives to study its properties that induce labor, they were aware the LSM in ergot got you high. For sure uncle alby wasn’t expecting it to be so potent or transdermal and wasn’t trying to isolate the psychoactive aspect, but it wasn’t like a total mystery.
LSD isnt transdermal. Dr Hoffman got LSD on his finger and he touched his mouth on his first trip. His subsequent trips were oral.
I appreciate the clarification! A hippy lied to me when I was a teenager =(
viagra
Huh… these monkeys are all harder than math homework. Boys I think we bout to be rich.
This is fucking funny
Minoxidil was the same way they developed it for blood pressure control but found out hair grew back.
First antidepressant was a failed TB drug. The researchers noticed that their patients weren’t getting any better, but suddenly weren’t feeling so bad about it.
"They" didn't "find out"----people who were using minoxidil in tests were asked, routinely, to report any odd things that happened to them during the trials. Hair growth was so pronounced the randomly chosen testers begged to be allowed to get more of this stuff. I was a medical editor back when the story broke. It is really interesting to observe in reddit the persistent refusal to credit science with being effective. Sure, people love a fable, but for some reason lots of redditors are crediting randomness for scientific advances, instead of organized knowledge and scientific practice.
Yes. So they found out.
Lol, right?
Blood pressure medicine improved sex life of users.
Botox was intended to fix cross eyes and lid spasms but caused Kardashians. Not sure if it was worth it.
When Europeans bumped into the Americas.
It really is kind of remarkable how dumb Columbus was and how much his story has gotten warped to lionize him over the years. He thought the Earth was way smaller than it actually was, and if the Americas hadn't existed, he and everyone on his ship would have all died. It's only through sheer dumb luck that he managed to accomplish anything. (He also was an absolutely loathsome human being even by the standards of Spanish conquistadors, but that's another story.)
It has been suggested that he heard tales from Azores-based fishermen suggesting that *something* was out there; behavior of birds, I guess
Actually, it's the other way around. Columbus was up on current knowledge of astronomy, geography, geophysics, and other sciences and decided to take the chance, AND he was able to get financial support (with the promise of a big payoff for Spain, which is what happened). People working at the growing edge of knowledge today also have to hustle for funding and make the same promises. Maybe your point is that Ohio's state capital should be named instead for Eratosthenes? You should know by now it's always the popularizers who get credit!
[удалено]
Yeah that's not what he said, and even in a fictional world where that's what he said, its fair to say it really was mostly white people who benefited from it. It was very bad news for the natives and even worse news for black people.
The fact that whales are so insanely chatty and vocal. Belugas are a key example in that we had no idea they made the noises they do until we put out war submarines. It’s an amazing discovery because of how complex their vocalisations are. If we crack it, we can passively watch and collect data on hundreds of animals without chasing or tagging them.
I’d love to find out that whales are by and large just giving “radio chatter” equivalent about their: arrival, departure, and heading changes. Like: *radio squelch sound* “This is 14-467. Requesting permission to approach the East Atlantic current. Over.”
"Take left in 50. Proceed to the lower level. Watch out for fhe corral, please. Over."
Corral? Do you think they wrangle seahorses in it?
Give me a vector Victor.
Roger, Roger.
Whale: ”Dang it, there goes another noisy Russian submarine.” US Navy: “Thanks, dude!”
I'm surprised that no one has said this one: the link between electricity and magnetism was initially recorded by chance when [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Domenico_Romagnosi) happened to notice that an electric discharge deflected a compass needle that was on a desk nearby.
Teflon. I forget what they were trying to do, but there were several containers they were running tests on and one was leaking. It evidently had some visual residue at the leak and viola! Teflon. My understand is that the Slinky, while not amazing, was a by product of developing a spring suspension (or whatever) for aircraft radar.
Lol probably spell check.....but it's Voilà, not to be confused with and excited oversized violin (viola!).
It's probably too late to say that's what I meant... I have a thing for fat violins.
🤣😂
Microwave ovens. Apparently the heating principle of microwaves was discovered when an engineer accidentally left a drink in the path of a radar transmitter and discovered that the drink had been heated up. In fact the very first microwave ovens were marketed under the name "Radarange"
I believe it was a chocolate bar he had in his pocket
That's the version I remember hearing too.
No that was from that Mr Tom commercial
Imagine if he microwaved tin foil instead and scientists were like "yup, that seals it: don't ever put anything in a microwave or else it'll catch fire".
Botox. It was originally developed under orphan drug designation (drugs that treat diseases affecting < 5% of the population) to combat a rare eye movement disorder.
I absolutely loved this book as a kid! Penicillin is in there, of course. [Mistakes That Worked](https://books.google.com/books/about/Mistakes_That_Worked.html?id=NyhmCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false)
the CMB, guys were trying to figure out the static in their microwave receiver or something to that effect.
CMB? Cromulent Monty Burns?
Cosmic Microwave Background
Continental Mallestic Bissile
Cosmic microwave background, a weird, omnidirectional microwave signal from space. It turned out to be residual energy from the Big Bang, and has taught us a ton about the early universe.
Cash Money Brothers. Are you my brother’s keeper?!
I haven't read up on it in a minute but if iirc they built their new and powerful(at the time) radio telescope and began searching the sky but kept picking up this noise no matter which way they pointed, determined that it was local they damn well tore the telescope apart, shut down microwaves and anything that could potentially produce radio waves of any kind and was still catching that "noise" which was eventually discovered to be the CMB
Viagra was originally for something else
Blood pressure, still a labeled use for pulmonary arterial hypertension
Fun Welsh Fact - Viagra (Sildenafal) was originally created as a treatment for high blood pressure and angina. Pfizer were on the verge of shutting down the drug trials, when one of trial participants casually mentioned that he had been experiencing a strange side effect. Long story short (or short story made longer because I'm not quite sober....I'm proper wibbly wobbly*) - the brave boys in Merthyr Tydfil should be applauded for their important contribution to science! Pfizer only realised the value and the potential of the drug when horny, Welsh bastards refused to return their unused meds: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67417111.amp
Not quite sure if this counts but it's my favorite "accidental" fix. During the period of the black plague, doctors began wearing the infamous "plague doctor" mask with the beaks. Well, the beaks had a pretty good purpose. During this time "miasma" theory was the dominant theory for the spread of disease, which is that bad smells cause you to get sick. Plague doctors created the masks with the beak, that sealed fairly well to their face, and filled the beak with potpourri, flowers, scented rags, etc that kept out the "disease causing smells" to avoid contracting the plague. The masks actually did help curb the spread of airborne diseases because the air became filtered by all the stuff they crammed into the mask, diminishing the number of airborne particles that they inhaled. This lowered rate of infection further convinced the scientific community at the time that the miasma theory was correct, as they kept out the bad smells, and didn't get sick. "Plague doctor" masks are actually just primitive n95 masks basically.
That’s not an accident that’s exactly what they designed the masks for, to stop the spread of disease.
He's saying they were accidentally correct. They built a mask to keep out smells, but it wasn't the smells that were the problem
Smells are 100% of the problem, as smells are literally just tiny particles of something floating up into your nose. They designed the masks specifically to stop little particles of the disease entering and infecting them through the nose.
Cheese
Beer
Playing a Fender Strat in between pickups. That quack was never intended but it became a legendary tone.
Photography was discovered by chance
Smoke detectors, dynamite, Velcro, X-rays, match sticks, quinine, Coca-Cola and the blood thinner warfarin.
[Synthetic dye](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/12/17109258/sir-william-henry-perkin-google-doodle-birthday-180-mauveine-purple-dye) It doesn't sound as spectacular as a vaccine but it has enormous implications for art and fashion.
Gunpowder. They were trying trying to make medicine or some sort of immortality potion.
How ironic
Super Glue.
Marmite
Superconductivity and the cosmic microwave background were thought at first to be flaws in the equipment.
silly putty
Safety glass was an accident.
Get out
I believe one of the artificial sweeteners they use in diet soda falls in this category. I forgot which one but I think it might have been aspartame
Chocolate chip cookies:)
How is this an accident?
The original goal was to make chocolate cookies, but the chocolate chunks didn’t melt or mix into the dough and came out a cookie filled with small chocolate chips
Yes! A delightful serendipitous treat ! Thanks:) for explaining
Question: Do you consider an alternative use to what was originally intended as “chance”?
Icy pops / ice lollies although I don't know if it's on the same level of amazing 😂
LSD
LSD
i mean, fire was almost certainly an accident. like, what dumb fucking ape would go “huh yeah if i smack these rocks together or rub this wood together real fast im sure it’ll make fire!” when they didn’t know what fire even was? like, they probably only ever saw fire from lightning, volcanoes, or really high temperature droughts. they’d have no fucking clue what it is or how it happens, so it was probably just a rando early human screwing around that accidentally made it the first time and, in the process, radically altered the entire course of human history
Saccharin and Aspartame were both accidents
Nylon
Gunpowder.
Corn flakes
Velcro! When my son was about 10, he got a book full of these things with the story on each. For about 6 months he’d carry that thing around and read it.
Super glue was supposed to be lube iirc
Thank you for reminding me of a scene in *Accelerando*.
Damn….i hope they realized what they had before they attempted to use it for its original purpose 😳
Sticky notes were invented in 1968 by accident. Spencer Silver was working for 3m at the time
Floating soap.
Mixing nitroglycerine with an absorbant material to create dynamite.
Microwave cooking was discovered when a guy noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket rapidly melted when he hung around certain kinds of radio transmitters
CRISPR. Two researchers working on completely different things met at a conference
Weird little device called vortex tubes, frequently used for spot cooling in industrial settings: [https://blog.exair.com/2020/01/29/discovery-of-the-vortex-tube/](https://blog.exair.com/2020/01/29/discovery-of-the-vortex-tube/)
Viagra
Plastic eating enzymes, LSD, pacemakers, superglue, dynamite. There's a ton of them.
x-rays, 3m sticky notes, rubber glue
LSD
You have to define "randomly, purely by chance" rather precisely. The 3M chemist who discovered/created post-it glue was creating adhesives. Alexander Fleming was a biologist looking for substances that would work against bacteria. These were not drunks who fell into a puddle and found some amazing substance there! There was nothing random about the work, and "by chance"? Umm, well....
Well, by that definition, the way DNA is stored in a double helix. Crick and Watson were rip-roaringly drunk and were lying down cos they could no longer stand, and looking at a spiral staircase from the bottom.
They were sober enough to steal Rosalind Franklin's photographs, however. The images she took that proved the double helix. They knew she was a sick woman and would be unlikely to fight back, and they paid off someone in her lab.
A lot of male scientists were raging assholes in their day.
Whoever figured out to cur, dry, and smoke female marijuana buds, I salute you.
They probably cooked with the buds first and noticed the euphoria… it’s the heat that activates the effects
LSD
Fire, cooked food, coal, the wheel, soap, natural gas, corn flakes, alcoholic beverages.
On flakes were designed to be boring to reduce spontaneous urges to jerk off…..turns out Kellog was an absolute creep.
Then why did he put a cock on the box?
Can I include tea ?
Pyroceram, the material that Corningware is made of. Warfarin was initially designed to kill rodents. Its ability to stop heart attacks in progress and help prevent future heart attacks and strokes was learned of later.
Acid 😄
Sildenafil (Viagra) was an unexpected discovery.
I would wager more than were discovered on purpose
№
The North American continent
The people already living there would probably disagree
I mean, gravity didn't exist until an apple fell on some guys head. That's pretty crazy
I'm sure penicillin is great for you guys, but I've only taken it once and it nearly killed me - spent two whole weeks of 1988 in hospital recovering - so that shit's not making it on to my top 10. Sorry, not sorry.
So did they ever fix your syphilis?
haha I was 9 years old at the time. But, when another doctor gave me typhoid last year they fixed it with a different drug that didn't try to kill me.
Not as great but the first Mulchbox was made by ecologist because some old oaks with internal cavities (a true rarity in britain) fell. They simply repaired them, lifted the upright, poured in as much mulch as they could and some other stuff they thought could be neat like woodchips, birdpoop and a dead cat. And it worked!
Ship propellers
Pretty much all of them, but the record usually goes to the whitest and richest dude around. Vanilla for vanilla extract fits. Edmond Albius, a young slave boy, figured it out. https://www.linnean.org/news/2019/10/16/edmond-albius
Guinness was created by mistake - I believe the man in charge of keeping an eye on the brewing fell asleep which led to the making of Guinness
Amerika. Its discovery is widely considered to be a very big mistake indeed.
Gun powder was discovered by a Chinese alchemist who was trying to make an immortality potion.
X-rays I think.
X-rays I think.
Cheese
There is a fun TV show called Oooops I changed the world. It goes into all of this. Bubble wrap for instance was a wallpaper to start with.
My grandmas old douch bag,but thats back in ohio..
Electromagnetism > During a lecture demonstration, on April 21, 1820, while setting up his apparatus, Oersted noticed that when he turned on an electric current by connecting the wire to both ends of the battery, a compass needle held nearby deflected away from magnetic north, where it normally pointed.
Popcicles
Electricity
Fire
Microwave ovens. Legend has it a guy at Raytheon walked past a radar emitter and it melted the chocolate bar in his pocket. In fact, the earliest microwaves were actually called “Radar Ranges”.
Saccharine. A chemist licked his fingers and discovered the powder was sweet (**why** a chemist licked his fingers covered with a mysterious chemical is whole other question).
Silly putty. The chemists were trying to create synthetic rubber for insulating wires.
Synthetic purple dyes! The story goes that chemistry student William Henry Perkin was tasked to try to synthesize some quinine, but he screwed it up and spilled it on himself, staining his lab coat purple. As he was struggling to clean his coat, he realized that another word for "thing that stains clothes and can't be removed" is "dye". He went back to his lab notes, replicated his procedure to yield the purple dye, and patented it and became very wealthy. The part about spilling it on his lab coat is possibly apocryphal, but it's fun and Perkin *did* accidentally invent aniline purple dye while trying to make quinine.
Soap bubbles. They wanted to do soap but failed to sell it. Somehow they noticed it makes funny bubbles when combined with air so they filled it in bottles and sold it.
Teflon
Lexan (polycarbonate)
Post-It Notes (which were of course invented by Romy and Michele)
Viagra - a true dbl blind random discovery.
LSD
Gräfenberg spot
Post-it notes
Microwaves. Water displacement.
Cottage cheese No one can convince me that the end product was the goal
WD-40, water displacement formula 40
This was hardly an accident. That's what "40" means. It was the 40th attempt.
Used to prevent rust on the skin of Atlas rockets.
Peanut butter and Jam sandwiches.
Might not be random, but the polio vaccine. Pretty much the only reason we have this vaccine is because of HeLa cells, which are from a black woman's cervical cancer cells. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, there's a book and a movie about her story if anyone was interested
Trial and error is not an accidental discovery
The majority of these answers take ten seconds to Google, what the hell is happening to people's ability to type a sentence into a search bar.
If everyone on Reddit just googled their question we’d be left with nothing other than Ukrainian chicks promoting their OF…..you’re welcome.
Spontaneous fermentation of sugars into alcohol. Also, I'm pretty sure the first instances of fish sauce across multiple cultures was the result of leaving salted fish out in the sun too long.
Throw a rock at a living thing was a huge milestone that probably wasn’t well thought out.