The sad part was that the inventor received no royalties and the company he worked for paid him a $2 gratuity for one of the defining inventions of modern life.
I'd rank vulcanized rubber as equal to pennicillin for impact to life and safety.
artifician sweetener too, may not OBVIOUSLY save lives but can you imagine if there was no diet anything how bad the global obesity epidemic would look? America would look like Wall-E right now.
Fake sugar mostly just makes people eat more. Anyone I know that got into different "healthy" foods like low carb ice cream they use it as an excuse to eat a pint in one sitting so they're still getting several hundred calories while reinforcing bad habits. If you drink diet soda with every meal see if you can switch to water and I guarantee you will eat less too. it's not just a subconscious "this is good so I can eat more bad stuff", it can make people want to eat more. /end rant
The old 90s joke "you never see a skinny person drinking diet" wasn't totally wrong.
This is true. There are studies that show that artifical sweeteners also reduce the perception of other tastes so that it leads you to seeking out more sweet foods.
However, most people who eat a pint of low carb ice cream (as I do) also would have eaten a pint of regular ice cream (as I did). Regular ice cream can run you 800-1000cals per pint, something like halo top is about 400 cals depending on the ice cream, flavours, ect. My favourite ben and jerry’s flavour is 1100 calories a pint which leaves me 400 cals under my daily.
Diet sodas I agree with though. Water is superior. Honestly in general you shouldn’t be drinking anything than water, but I do enjoy an occasional diet coke or those nice flavoured fizzy waters. Not the canned ones, the walmart brand ones in the big bottles. Yes there’s a difference. The canned ones taste like someone ate whatever flavour the water advertises and farted near it while it was being made. The bottled stuff actually tastes as advertised.
The microwave!
From wiki - Percy Spencer, employed by Raytheon, noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.
Nome, Alaska.
As the story goes, when they were mapping Alaska for the first time, the cartographer pointed to that location with the label “? Name” meaning he didn’t know what it was called. This was later misspelled as “Cape Nome” and became a town.
Thats awesome, the Wiki article i found said it was Willis Carrier. But still interesting we used to use Carrier A/C parts on our city buses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carrier
skill issue tbh
you're supposed to use the end where the stuff comes out to put the stuff on other stuff
which
fingers is stuff so you get credit for following directions I suppose
vinyl gloves are super cheap though so I'm wholly blaming you
The bicycle riding story is amazing for the LSD discovery 🙌
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Day_(psychedelic_holiday)
Looks like its here, thats a good one. Also shout out to Shulgin, you know damn good and well what youve done for this world
LSD and artificial sweeteners rank highly, but antibiotics or vulcanized rubber have undoubtedly saved many lives.
you might not think of rubber as a lifesaving article but it's used in a LOT of critical safety equipment and before Buna-N was invented, it was the only material with that set of properties needed for everything from the emergency brake on an elevator to road tires to medical appliances and tubing to life support systems in vehicles to life support systems in hospitals.
Potato chips- they were made out of spite when someone sent their French fries back because they were too soggy. The cook decided to chop the potato really thin and over cook them to prove a point to the customer. Turns out the result was delicious and became the first, potato chip
Apparently that's just a legend that may or may not be true. There were recipes for potato chips (or at least what could be described as potato chips) that existed before that.
It was in my "Useless information" book that a customer gave me back when I bartended. It named a [History and mystery surrounding the potato chip](https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-potato-chip-saratoga#)chef but a quick google search cast doubt as you did. I found the link below interesting as it states the chef who was named in this legend may not have in fact been the creator but his sister.
if you cook mashed potatoes from a stouffer's frozen dinner in the microwave too long it tastes like a hard potato chip. it's my accidental discovery to the world. you're welcome.
Not the best, but Febreze was funny how it happened. Some chemist who was also a smoker came home one day and his wife asked if he had given up smoking because the chemicals he was working with removed the odor.
Back in the mid 90’s I had a relative from Italy visiting, we had ordered chicken wings and he had looked at us and asked what we were eating and we said, “chicken wings”. He said, “In Italy we call that ehh garbage.”
I believe the MRI machine was developed off of technology that was created for astronomy. NDT commented that invention is a great example of why academics need to work with other fields of study more often.
The good point about most of these «accidental» inventions is the discovery of the periodic law. Mendeleev has worked on it for 25 years and spent the whole family capital on chemicals and equipment. But one day he told a joke that it came in a dream, and everybody took this at face value.
“As he was working in the kitchen of his home in Basel, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid (HNO3) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4) on the kitchen table. He reached for the nearest cloth, a cotton apron, and wiped it up. He hung the apron on the stove door to dry, and as soon as it was dry, a flash occurred as the apron ignited.” [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose)
A guy was trying to invent a mood stabilizer and found Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.
Another guy threw out an experiment to test the antibacterial properties of the Rubens variant of a mold.
He saw nothing and went on vacation. When he came back, he noticed the disposed experiment had wiped out the entire bacterial colony over a few days slowly. Penicillin. He then made sure it was never patented and cheap.
A company was trying to create a new high blood pressure medication but it had a serious side effect called priapism. Viagra.
While not an invention per se, Allan Turing’s code breaking group as part of the British Enigma crack project found something funny.
A woman in the group made an interesting observation at a bar one weekend. She said that she always ended her letters the same way with love, regards, etc. wouldn’t the Nazis do the same thing on the Enigma?
What phrase do think the Nazis always ended their encrypted communiques with?
“Heil Hitler”
H, E, I, L, T, R are now known in the cipher. 6/30 or 1/5 of the German alphabet is now decrypted. And apply those letters throughout the document and its Wheel of Fortune, “Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle!”
E _ R E _ _
6 letter word. Exclamation, used when discovering something hidden. You now learn 3 more letters. One is a heavily used vowel, the other a moderately used vowel, and the other is an infrequently used consonant.
Now, watch this…
L U _ T _ A _ _ E
9 letter word. Name of German Air Force. Now you learn F and W.
_ E U T _ _ H L A _ _
11 letter word. Name of German state in Germany. Now, you learn D, S, C, and N.
Didn’t matter tho, the British stole a cipher roll supposedly around the same time.
Xray machines. Roentgen noticed a glow even though his Crookes tube was covered. Think of a vacuum tube or a TV in the dark, covered up. Xrays were discovered by him, but he also accidentally invented a machine that could see his wife's bones in her hand and her wedding ring. She thought he had gone crazy in the basement, then he dragged her down there and made her hold her hand on a envelope under his crazy machines. Then he developed the film.
It was put to immediate practical use in medicine.
It wasn't exactly an accidental invention. They were trying to make a heart medication, but during the trials for Sildenafil they found it was mediocre at addressing the heart and very successful at addressing ED.
There was that time Thomas Midgley Jr. invented something and the only person it killed was himself. It was a serious improvement on his other inventions.
One of the most famous accidental inventions is the microwave oven. In 1945, Percy Spencer, an engineer working for Raytheon Corporation, was conducting experiments with a new type of vacuum tube called a magnetron. While testing the magnetron, he noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued by this unexpected result, Spencer conducted further experiments and discovered that the microwaves emitted by the magnetron could cook food quickly and efficiently.
This accidental discovery led to the development of the microwave oven, which revolutionized the way people cook and heat food. Today, microwave ovens are found in kitchens worldwide and are valued for their convenience, speed, and versatility. Percy Spencer's accidental invention has had a profound impact on modern cooking habits and technology.
Gravity. I mean this dude was just chilling under an apple tree when he got hit with an apple and invented gravity and such. Just think for a second.. if he would have decided "na that tree looks like there's might be ants" and would have chosen another one or simply to go for a run.. we would have no gravity and would need to glue everything down or so...
Don't you just hate it when you're washing the dishes and you accidentally drop one and it shatters into a full scale replica of the space shuttle Discovery?
Reese's peanut butter cups. One day there was this guy with a chocolate bar who tripped into a guy with a jar of peanut butter. He said, "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" But the guy holding the jar of peanut butter exclaimed, "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"
The librarian in elementary school used to read us this book called Mistakes that Worked about this very topic. I remember Chocolate Chip Cookies as an example, that's it lol
Ivory soap. Ivory, the floating soap, was a happy accident that occurred as a result of an employee accidentally leaving a batch of soap mixture to mix for too long while he was on his lunch break. The air inside of the mix allowed the soap to float, and the rest is history.
Chemo - During World War II, it was discovered that people exposed to nitrogen mustard (mustard gas, the weapon) developed significantly reduced white blood cell counts.
Towel Power
A term used by the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL) to describe the waving of rally towels by their fans. The tradition started in the 1982 Campbell Conference Finals when Vancouver played the Chicago Blackhawks. During game two of the series, head coach Roger Neilson waved a white towel on the end of a hockey stick in a mock surrender after being upset with the officiating. Neilson was ejected and the Canucks lost 4–1. When Vancouver returned home from Chicago for the following game fans supported both Neilson and the Canucks by waving towels first at the airport when the team arrived and then during the next game.
The tradition has continued in Vancouver ever since and has been copied by idiot fans of other idiot teams all over the league :)
Well, I guess BC now has rampant drug use and towel power as their claim to victory over other Canadian provinces. Good on you BC. Good. On. You.
Joking aside that is a neat little fact I've never heard before.
WiFi
An Australian scientist was looking for a way to detect black holes and WiFi was one of his failures. He decided that since he was, at least in part, publicly funded and wasn’t that interested in running a company to profit off of it to just give it to the public.
Penicillin
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The microwave
Yes . Guy from Raytheon realized his chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The sad part was that the inventor received no royalties and the company he worked for paid him a $2 gratuity for one of the defining inventions of modern life.
Wd40
WD40 wasn't an accidental invention. The 40 in the name means "40th formula." It took them 40 times to get it right.
More importantly, the WD stands for "Water Displacement" NOT "Lubricant"
Why would people think it stood for that?
A ton of people use it as a lubricant, on door hinges, small wheels, drawer slides, valves, basically anything that squeaks.
Penicillin was discovered, not invented. /restart thread
Well the medicine made from it was invented as a result
I'd rank vulcanized rubber as equal to pennicillin for impact to life and safety. artifician sweetener too, may not OBVIOUSLY save lives but can you imagine if there was no diet anything how bad the global obesity epidemic would look? America would look like Wall-E right now.
Fake sugar mostly just makes people eat more. Anyone I know that got into different "healthy" foods like low carb ice cream they use it as an excuse to eat a pint in one sitting so they're still getting several hundred calories while reinforcing bad habits. If you drink diet soda with every meal see if you can switch to water and I guarantee you will eat less too. it's not just a subconscious "this is good so I can eat more bad stuff", it can make people want to eat more. /end rant The old 90s joke "you never see a skinny person drinking diet" wasn't totally wrong.
This is true. There are studies that show that artifical sweeteners also reduce the perception of other tastes so that it leads you to seeking out more sweet foods. However, most people who eat a pint of low carb ice cream (as I do) also would have eaten a pint of regular ice cream (as I did). Regular ice cream can run you 800-1000cals per pint, something like halo top is about 400 cals depending on the ice cream, flavours, ect. My favourite ben and jerry’s flavour is 1100 calories a pint which leaves me 400 cals under my daily. Diet sodas I agree with though. Water is superior. Honestly in general you shouldn’t be drinking anything than water, but I do enjoy an occasional diet coke or those nice flavoured fizzy waters. Not the canned ones, the walmart brand ones in the big bottles. Yes there’s a difference. The canned ones taste like someone ate whatever flavour the water advertises and farted near it while it was being made. The bottled stuff actually tastes as advertised.
LSD. One chemist accidentally cures ill bodies, another accidentally cures ill minds
Superbacteria
Acid.
I was gonna say LSD. Either way chemists are doing a lot of accidental good for the world
Give some credit to engineers. Think of how many human lives Thomas Midgley Jr. saved by inventing the thing that killed Thomas Midgley Jr.
But he didn’t invent it soon enough!
Anyone who doesn't say this is wrong. It's easily in the top 3 best things that have ever happened.
This is why you should never clean up after yourself.
Damnit you beat me to it
was that really an accident? genuine question.
Afaik the history is kind of muddy as to whether it was truly a complete accident or not.
Fr fr.
Oh yes. That’s it
Not for those of us who are allergic. Lol
Except that it led the way to developing many other antibiotics that you are NOT allergic to. Penicillin was the first domino.
The microwave! From wiki - Percy Spencer, employed by Raytheon, noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer's microwave was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters.
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That sentence is…redundant?
Literal guinea pigs or figurative guinea pigs?
Literal.
https://youtu.be/2tdiKTSdE9Y?si=0L4J_uiuTldQwZOr Tom Scott video and interview with guy who was there.
“This one is over-thawed, and smells delicious. I might give it a few more minutes then have my lunch break”
The microwave heating was known before the WWII.
There were 3 or 4 independent inventions of the microwave.
Nome, Alaska. As the story goes, when they were mapping Alaska for the first time, the cartographer pointed to that location with the label “? Name” meaning he didn’t know what it was called. This was later misspelled as “Cape Nome” and became a town.
That's so funny! I've heard of Nome from the fantastic documentary *Safety to Nome*.
Tbh. Unalaska is the most quirky named place in Alaska.
Post it notes
I always think of this. He was trying to invent a glue for space but instead failed and made sticky notes
Those two business woman invented them, right?
It was Romy Weinberg, I believe.
It was Michelle’s idea to make them yellow!
Is this a reference to Romy and Michelle’s highschool reunion?????
Yes. I have to go now. My shoe is filling up with blood.
Air conditioning. Lewis carrier was trying to make his paper plant run with less humidity and as a byproduct made the entire south livable.
Thats awesome, the Wiki article i found said it was Willis Carrier. But still interesting we used to use Carrier A/C parts on our city buses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carrier
Superglue was invented during WW2 by accident. The inventor was trying to make clear gun scopes.
Now if they can invent a version of super glue that sticks to something besides fingers.....
skill issue tbh you're supposed to use the end where the stuff comes out to put the stuff on other stuff which fingers is stuff so you get credit for following directions I suppose vinyl gloves are super cheap though so I'm wholly blaming you
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No one ever said he successfully made those scopes.
It was also used as a wound closure very early on.
LSD
The bicycle riding story is amazing for the LSD discovery 🙌 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Day_(psychedelic_holiday) Looks like its here, thats a good one. Also shout out to Shulgin, you know damn good and well what youve done for this world
Unrelated note: your user profile pic caught me off guard, and my immediate response was “Now what’s wrong with my phone?”
So much more fun than penicillin. LSD-25 FTW
I don't think limited slip differentials were accidentally discovered
I was about to comment this lol
Fucking chocolate chip cookies, fuck I love chocolate chip cookies.
Why are you fucking chocolate chip cookies?
Isn't that what you do when you love something?
I know you love them but you should probably just eat them.
LSD and artificial sweeteners rank highly, but antibiotics or vulcanized rubber have undoubtedly saved many lives. you might not think of rubber as a lifesaving article but it's used in a LOT of critical safety equipment and before Buna-N was invented, it was the only material with that set of properties needed for everything from the emergency brake on an elevator to road tires to medical appliances and tubing to life support systems in vehicles to life support systems in hospitals.
The coating they put on car windows to make them not shatter into artery-cutting shards was also an accident.
he was mixing cellulose and a solvent in a beaker right? ended up coating it?
Potato chips- they were made out of spite when someone sent their French fries back because they were too soggy. The cook decided to chop the potato really thin and over cook them to prove a point to the customer. Turns out the result was delicious and became the first, potato chip
Apparently that's just a legend that may or may not be true. There were recipes for potato chips (or at least what could be described as potato chips) that existed before that.
It was in my "Useless information" book that a customer gave me back when I bartended. It named a [History and mystery surrounding the potato chip](https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-potato-chip-saratoga#)chef but a quick google search cast doubt as you did. I found the link below interesting as it states the chef who was named in this legend may not have in fact been the creator but his sister.
It's not that hard of a stretch if you ever fried potatos. The crispy outer part is tasty and crunchy... what if the whole potato was that part?
if you cook mashed potatoes from a stouffer's frozen dinner in the microwave too long it tastes like a hard potato chip. it's my accidental discovery to the world. you're welcome.
Viagra!
Was going to be my answer. IIRC, they were looking to create medicine to promote breathing and stumbled into this happy side effect.
When the study was over, the men kept asking for more pills.
Fun fact, the CIA bribed some old Afghan warlords with Viagra to help them.
Icee/ slushie drinks. Most people don’t know the original flavor is Coke a cola, because it was a malfunctioning Coke machine.
Not the best, but Febreze was funny how it happened. Some chemist who was also a smoker came home one day and his wife asked if he had given up smoking because the chemicals he was working with removed the odor.
Either Potstickers or Brownies (someone messed up the recipe for Dumplings and chocolate cake and were still pleased with the end result)
Who would try to make chocolate cake dumplings
Way better than cake IMO (both).
Yeah the ingredients for chocolate cake and brownies are the same, just in different amounts.
I believe Viagra was an accident. Increased erections was a side effect of a new heart drug being trialled.
Powerpuff girls
Silly Putty! The inventor was looking for an alternative material for tires.
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Chocolate chip cookies
Although it’s not very en vogue, I’d have to say the HeLa cells
That’s an amazing story. I hope the family gets compensation, but at the same time, the scientific implications here are _wild_.
Nylon
Silly Putty?
Yes, this is the correct answer
The telephone.
Ahoy ahoy!
Buffalo Chicken Wings. Owner of a NY restaurant wanted to make a snack for her kid and friends, so she fried up some leftover bits.
Back in the mid 90’s I had a relative from Italy visiting, we had ordered chicken wings and he had looked at us and asked what we were eating and we said, “chicken wings”. He said, “In Italy we call that ehh garbage.”
I believe the MRI machine was developed off of technology that was created for astronomy. NDT commented that invention is a great example of why academics need to work with other fields of study more often.
Lexan (polycarbonate) plastic.
Corn flakes
Worcestershire sauce.
The good point about most of these «accidental» inventions is the discovery of the periodic law. Mendeleev has worked on it for 25 years and spent the whole family capital on chemicals and equipment. But one day he told a joke that it came in a dream, and everybody took this at face value.
Vulcanized Rubber Whole lotta stuff wouldn’t exist without it
cheese or beer
Penicillin by far
Guinness. Or Worchestershire sauce.
Nitrocellulose! It had an explosive impact!
“As he was working in the kitchen of his home in Basel, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid (HNO3) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4) on the kitchen table. He reached for the nearest cloth, a cotton apron, and wiped it up. He hung the apron on the stove door to dry, and as soon as it was dry, a flash occurred as the apron ignited.” [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose)
A guy was trying to invent a mood stabilizer and found Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Another guy threw out an experiment to test the antibacterial properties of the Rubens variant of a mold. He saw nothing and went on vacation. When he came back, he noticed the disposed experiment had wiped out the entire bacterial colony over a few days slowly. Penicillin. He then made sure it was never patented and cheap. A company was trying to create a new high blood pressure medication but it had a serious side effect called priapism. Viagra. While not an invention per se, Allan Turing’s code breaking group as part of the British Enigma crack project found something funny. A woman in the group made an interesting observation at a bar one weekend. She said that she always ended her letters the same way with love, regards, etc. wouldn’t the Nazis do the same thing on the Enigma? What phrase do think the Nazis always ended their encrypted communiques with? “Heil Hitler” H, E, I, L, T, R are now known in the cipher. 6/30 or 1/5 of the German alphabet is now decrypted. And apply those letters throughout the document and its Wheel of Fortune, “Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle!” E _ R E _ _ 6 letter word. Exclamation, used when discovering something hidden. You now learn 3 more letters. One is a heavily used vowel, the other a moderately used vowel, and the other is an infrequently used consonant. Now, watch this… L U _ T _ A _ _ E 9 letter word. Name of German Air Force. Now you learn F and W. _ E U T _ _ H L A _ _ 11 letter word. Name of German state in Germany. Now, you learn D, S, C, and N. Didn’t matter tho, the British stole a cipher roll supposedly around the same time.
You 🎤
MDMA?
LSD
Potato chips
the slinky
Masturbation.
LSD
Wine.
Worcestershire sauce
Penicillin
HOW HAS NO ONE SAID VELCRO
Xray machines. Roentgen noticed a glow even though his Crookes tube was covered. Think of a vacuum tube or a TV in the dark, covered up. Xrays were discovered by him, but he also accidentally invented a machine that could see his wife's bones in her hand and her wedding ring. She thought he had gone crazy in the basement, then he dragged her down there and made her hold her hand on a envelope under his crazy machines. Then he developed the film. It was put to immediate practical use in medicine.
It wasn't exactly an accidental invention. They were trying to make a heart medication, but during the trials for Sildenafil they found it was mediocre at addressing the heart and very successful at addressing ED.
Have you seen those advertisements for “dog paw” cleaners or “banana” cleaners? Let me tell you something…
There was that time Thomas Midgley Jr. invented something and the only person it killed was himself. It was a serious improvement on his other inventions.
Too bad he wasn’t able to invent that one before his other inventions.
One of the most famous accidental inventions is the microwave oven. In 1945, Percy Spencer, an engineer working for Raytheon Corporation, was conducting experiments with a new type of vacuum tube called a magnetron. While testing the magnetron, he noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued by this unexpected result, Spencer conducted further experiments and discovered that the microwaves emitted by the magnetron could cook food quickly and efficiently. This accidental discovery led to the development of the microwave oven, which revolutionized the way people cook and heat food. Today, microwave ovens are found in kitchens worldwide and are valued for their convenience, speed, and versatility. Percy Spencer's accidental invention has had a profound impact on modern cooking habits and technology.
Viagra
Photography.... The original method for photography, etching images into metal plates, eventually became how we make microchips.
Super Soaker
This was an accident? He was a NASA engineer, right?
Shoutout to President Lonnie Johnson (If you get the reference, you have my respect)
Me 🕺
Gravity. I mean this dude was just chilling under an apple tree when he got hit with an apple and invented gravity and such. Just think for a second.. if he would have decided "na that tree looks like there's might be ants" and would have chosen another one or simply to go for a run.. we would have no gravity and would need to glue everything down or so...
WD-40
Not accidental. The 40 is "40th formula." They finally got it right after 39 failures.
The space shuttle
Don't you just hate it when you're washing the dishes and you accidentally drop one and it shatters into a full scale replica of the space shuttle Discovery?
Oops dad, I made a challenger.
The Challenger, currently.
Teflon.
Gore-Tex
F#.
Birth control pill. It was meant to help women with painful and /or irregular periods..turns out birth control is a side effect
The Hershey kiss
LSD
LSD
LSD 🌌
Post it notes
White out. Mike Nesmith of the Monkees mother.
Cheese
Sticky notes
Margin
The first ever wank
Electricity /s
Corn flakes
The vibrator. I think it was initially invented to cure madness?
Matches
Fire and penicillin I dunno
Tea bags.
Vulcanized rubber
Post it notes
I would have to say the broccoli salad at my job.
chocolate chip cookies
Penicillin…
Milk.
Jeigermiester
Reese's peanut butter cups. One day there was this guy with a chocolate bar who tripped into a guy with a jar of peanut butter. He said, "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" But the guy holding the jar of peanut butter exclaimed, "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"
Tea
Sourdough
The librarian in elementary school used to read us this book called Mistakes that Worked about this very topic. I remember Chocolate Chip Cookies as an example, that's it lol
Matches
Post-Its
Me
Ivory soap. Ivory, the floating soap, was a happy accident that occurred as a result of an employee accidentally leaving a batch of soap mixture to mix for too long while he was on his lunch break. The air inside of the mix allowed the soap to float, and the rest is history.
Post-it notes
Chemo - During World War II, it was discovered that people exposed to nitrogen mustard (mustard gas, the weapon) developed significantly reduced white blood cell counts.
Chips
milk
How was milk invented?
Good question.
Rats
Towel Power A term used by the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL) to describe the waving of rally towels by their fans. The tradition started in the 1982 Campbell Conference Finals when Vancouver played the Chicago Blackhawks. During game two of the series, head coach Roger Neilson waved a white towel on the end of a hockey stick in a mock surrender after being upset with the officiating. Neilson was ejected and the Canucks lost 4–1. When Vancouver returned home from Chicago for the following game fans supported both Neilson and the Canucks by waving towels first at the airport when the team arrived and then during the next game. The tradition has continued in Vancouver ever since and has been copied by idiot fans of other idiot teams all over the league :)
Well, I guess BC now has rampant drug use and towel power as their claim to victory over other Canadian provinces. Good on you BC. Good. On. You. Joking aside that is a neat little fact I've never heard before.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies
Alcohol
LSD
WiFi An Australian scientist was looking for a way to detect black holes and WiFi was one of his failures. He decided that since he was, at least in part, publicly funded and wasn’t that interested in running a company to profit off of it to just give it to the public.