The Greatest Mistakes of All Time

Martha Brokenborough writes about her selection of The great mistakes that turned out well, mistakes that turned out to be some of the most valuable, most important, most memorable, or most delicious accidents in history.

We already know, for instance, that Christopher Columbus meant to sail to Asia, not America.

Where would Jack be if his mother hadn't tossed his magic beans out the window? Not up the beanstalk getting golden eggs from the giant's goose, that's for sure.

And where would Cinderella be had she not dropped her glass slipper? Cleaning the fireplace, that's where. (By the way, did you know that the original Cinderella story had her wearing a fur shoe? A French writer made a mistake when he wrote the story down in 1697, confusing two homonyms--vair, an Old French word for fur, and verre, which is French for glass. But it was a good mistake, making for much more romantic story, and much better fashion.)

Innkeeper Ruth Wakefield was baking Butter Drop Do cookies one day in the 1930s using a recipe that dated back to colonial times. She cut up a Nestlé chocolate bar and put the chunks in the batter, expecting them to melt. Wakefield thought she'd be pulling chocolate-flavored cookies out of the oven. Instead, what she got were butter cookies studded with gooey chocolate chips. Her mistake became one of the most favorite cookies of all time.

Coca-Cola was the result of another delicious accident. In 1886 a pharmacist named John Pemberton cooked up a medicinal syrup in a large brass kettle slung over an open fire, stirring it with an oar. He and his assistant mixed it with ice water, sipped it, and proclaimed it tasty. They wanted some more, and the assistant accidentally used carbonated water to mix the second batch. Voila! Instead of medicine, these men had created a fizzy beverage--one that is now consumed around the world.Today people guzzle 1 billion drinks a day from the Coca-Cola company.

Yellow sticky notes, officially known as Post-it Notes, got their start in 1968 when a 3M researcher tried to improve adhesive tape. What he got was a semisticky adhesive--not exactly what you want out of tape. Four years later, another 3M scientist was getting frustrated. This scientist was a member of his church choir, and he kept dropping the bookmarks stuck in his hymnal. What he needed was something that would stick without being too sticky--something just like that weak glue his colleague had accidentally created. In 1980 the Post-it Note became an official product and a huge hit.

Scotchgard grew out of an attempt to make a synthetic rubber to be used in airplane fuel lines. One day some of the new substance spilled on her assistant's canvas shoe, and they couldn't get it off. As the tennis shoe grew older, it got dingy--everywhere except where the substance had spilled. It took three more years of tinkering, but they had their Scotchgard.

A colorful character named Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a blob of rubber and sulfur on a hot stove accidentally inventing vulcanized rubber.

Penicillin is another famous example of a mistake turned good. In 1928 scientist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold spores had contaminated one of the bacteria samples he had left by an open window. Instead of discarding his ruined experiment, Fleming took a close look and noticed the mold was dissolving the harmful bacteria. And that's how we got penicillin.

"Mistakes are the portals for discovery." - James joyce

:: Bing Thursday, October 09, 2003 [+] ::
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