Accidental Discoveries

The melted candy bar, the moldy petri dish, the pigeon mess that turned out to be the echo of the Big Bang.

38 stories

• The Botanist Who Ground Up a Piece of the Sphinx to See If It Would Wiggle
• The Doorstop That Fell From Space — and Spent 30 Years Holding Open a Shed Door
• The Frustrated Yank That Turned a Snapping Plastic Rod Into Gore-Tex
• The Head Cold That Showed Alexander Fleming Your Tears Kill Germs — and the Lab Staff Paid Threepence to Cry
• The Jellyfish Extract Tossed Down a Lab Sink That Flashed Blue — and Lit Up Biology
• The Overheated Glass Plate That Bounced Off the Floor — and Became CorningWare
• The Physicist Who Tried to Bottle a Mountain Fog — and Caught Subatomic Particles Instead
• The Planet Galileo Drew in His Notebook 234 Years Before Anyone Discovered It
• The Hot Soldering Iron That Bumped a Syringe of Ink — and Invented the Inkjet Printer
• The Tin of Meat That Spoiled After a Dose of Radiation Meant to Kill Everything
• The Unwashed Flask That Fell 11 Feet and Became Your Windshield
• The Dogs That Drooled Too Soon — and the Bell Pavlov Didn't Ring
• The Spotted X-Ray Film That Traced the First Atomic Bomb — Through a Cardboard Box
• The Nuclear Watchdog Satellites That Caught the Universe Exploding Instead
• The Glue Rejected for Being Too Sticky — That Later Hoisted a TV Host Into the Air
• The Sweetener Discovered Because a Student Heard 'Test' as 'Taste'
• The Farmer Who Drove Through a Blizzard With a Dead Cow and a Milk Can of Blood
• The Basement Wall That Opened Onto a City for 20,000 People
• The Failed Heart Pill That Trial Volunteers Wouldn't Give Back
• The Lost Hammer That Led to 14,865 Roman Coins — and Got Its Own Museum Number
• The Fish Extinct for 66 Million Years That Rode to the Museum in a Taxi
• The Planet That Was Officially Named 'George' for 67 Years
• The Seaweed Ash That Ate Its Own Vats — and Gave Up a New Element
• The Ulcer Experiment That Splashed Out of Its Flask and Became Diet Soda
• The Wrong Resistor That Grabbed a Heartbeat Out of Thin Air
• The Oil-Well Gunk Drillers Hated That Became Vaseline
• The Rocket Scientist Whose Leaky Fridge Idea Became the Super Soaker
• The Buried Army Found by Farmers Digging a Well
• The Cylinder That Weighed Too Much and Became Teflon
• The Glow Across the Room That Let Us See Inside the Body
• The Hot Stove Accident That Invented Modern Rubber
• The Melted Candy Bar That Invented the Microwave
• The Moldy Petri Dish That Almost Got Thrown Away
• The Pigeon Mess That Turned Out to Be the Echo of the Big Bang
• The Runaway Goat That Led to the Dead Sea Scrolls
• The Schoolboy Whose Hot Ice Cream Froze Faster — and Baffled Physicists for 60 Years
• The Teenager Who Tried to Make Malaria Medicine and Accidentally Invented Purple
• The Teenagers Who Found a 20,000-Year-Old Art Gallery

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