Accidents are just that, things that shouldn’t have happened but they did. While accidents are commonly related to all things unfortunate, they are not necessarily sad. You will be surprised to learn that some of your favorite things were made unintentionally. They were never supposed to be made but they came about accidentally. Thank god for accidents!
Did you know that popsicles were a mistake? A little boy kept his glass of orange juice out in the freezing air and woke up to see a mixture frozen with the spoon still in it. There are a lot more such stories and we bring to you some fascinating ones.
Cornflakes
What’s the starter to any day? Cornflakes. It’s difficult to imagine a world without cornflakes because without them most of us would be lost over what to eat for breakfast. Dr John Harvey Kellogg and a broom seller in his past, Will Keith Kellogg, were brothers. The two were strict Seventh-Day Adventists meaning they were austere vegetarians and abstained from all material pleasures including alcohol and all forms of sexual activities.
They were very keen on researching into the effects of nutrition on the diets of people. One such research they did with wheat. They boiled wheat and made some dough out of it. Incidentally, one of the brothers left the dough out for far too long, so when it was rolled out it didn’t exactly shape out like bread. Rather the dough broke into small pieces that resembled snowflakes. After mulling over what could be made of these flakes, the brothers baked them. This was the cereal Granose. Later, they substituted the wheat in favor of corn and that’s how the cornflakes in your bowl came to be.
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Play-Doh
Just how many hours did we all spend as children with our fingers deep in a ball of Play-Doh? And now they’re telling us that Play-Doh was not supposed to be made. And that it had a whole other purpose when being made. Play-Doh was originally a wallpaper cleaner. And only later when a kindergarten teacher noticed that the squishy things could be a children’s toy were they marketed as toys.
Somewhere during the 1930s Joseph McVicker and Noah McVicker acquired the failing soap company Cincinnati after noticing that grocery stores all over America required good wallpaper cleaners to rid off the soot from the burning furnaces. And the duo was convinced that they could make such a cleaner. While tinkering with salt, boric acid, flour, and water they came up with an off white putty that was mushy and soft. Their sister-in-law took some of this putty to her school to use as an inexpensive material to make Christmas cards and the kids simply loved the dough. Nearly a century later and close to 800 million pounds of this “putty” sold, Play-Doh is now every kid’s best playmate.
Post-it Notes
Seriously what would note making students and office workers do without Post-it Notes? No idea. A scientist at 3M, Dr Spencer Silver, was commissioned to make a very strong adhesive but the plan backfired when he ended up creating a very weak adhesive that was pressure sensitive. For years, nothing much was made out of the adhesive and it was shelved in the company. That is until Arthur Fry, another fellow scientist, realized that there could after all be a use for the adhesive. He recognized that the adhesive barely left any residue behind and that it could comfortably be stuck on something and easily taken off too. There surely had to be some use for it. So he used some of the adhesive to mark a page in his hymn book and suggested that when applied to a piece of paper it could be used as a temporary marker of sorts. The company didn’t seem too enthused by the idea (they doubted the profitability) but still put out some stacks in the market. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Artificial Sweeteners
The invention of artificial sweeteners (saccharin) isn’t the cleanest of stories and you will learn why. Artificial sweeteners pass through your body without the need for being metabolized and don’t affect blood sugar levels, so they are essentially a gift to diabetic patients who just can’t hold their yearning for sugar. Plus they are zero calories so we’re thankful they exist.
But did you know that the discovery of saccharin was through a moment of unhygienic conditions? Constantin Fahlberg worked as a chemistry research assistant at John Hopkins University. He was then working on the development of a food preservative when he got some of the compound on his hands. He went home and sat down for dinner without washing his hands.
Accidentally, he tasted some of the compound stuck to his hand and the sweetness instantly hit him. He found the concoction of ammonia, sulfobenzoic acid and phosphorus chloride in a beaker and gave it another taste. The solution was extremely sweet. This was named saccharin from the Latin word meaning sugar. Saccharin worked as sugar’s substitute during the World Wars when sugar was rationed and sent to the troops fighting the war.
Sanitary Pads
The first sanitary pads were made not for the ladies but the men. We kid you not. For menstrual management to post childbirth, sanitary pads have made things easier and more hygienic for women. Menstrual pads have been mentioned as early as the 10th century but they were only pieces of old cloths or rags that had to be washed after every use. Disposable pads were later invented by Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America. But his invention was for the soldiers during the Civil War.
These were meant to stop the bleeding from the wounds of injured soldiers. Eventually nurses began to use them during their menstrual cycles. With very less at their disposal they made use of these “bandages”. They worked splendidly. The nurses didn’t have to bother with the washing (obviously) and their movements felt unrestricted. Eventually Kotex began marketing these disposable pads as sanitary napkins and they have remained so even today.
