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“Student Licked His Finger”: 28 Things That Were Discovered By Accident And Ended Up Being Useful
While our lives are affected by things happening around us each and every day, some of the strongest influences on a societal level are often new inventions or groundbreaking discoveries; and needless to say, there have been quite a few of them in history, and rather significant ones, too.
However, what’s not as evident is the fact that some of them were stumbled upon completely by accident. Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community have recently discussed such dumb luck discoveries and inventions, after one of them asked fellow netizens about things that would still likely be undiscovered today if it wasn’t for sheer luck. Redditors covered all sorts of instances, so if you’re burning with curiosity to learn more about them, wait no longer and scroll down to find the stories on the list below.
Image credits: Inside-Line
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Most of the major ones honestly would have been discovered one way or another sooner or later, so I'm got to say something a little more obscure: There was once a dude who had the idea for a universal glue, one that would stick to anything - glass, wood, plastic, metal, any two solids that needed to be glued together. A lot of experimentation ensued; many ~~convincing~~ combinations of ingredients were tested, most subsequently rejected. Eventually, one substance was discovered. Would it stick to metal? Check. Glass? Check. Paper? Check. Plastic? Check. Wood? Check. Ceramics? Check. Skin even?? Still Check! And this glue was not only nigh universal, but the connection was instant, and the glue did not degrade by being exposed to air. And the connection it formed had the strength of... a wet tissue... It was sticky all right, but rather useless for holding anything much heavier than a piece of paper, and even that could be trivially pulled off by a young child. It was absolutely useless for anything that wanted to be secured. No amount of tampering would make this glue strong enough to be used for anything that wanted to stay glued. ... One quick rebranding later and the Post-It note was born.
Marie Dahme 1 year ago
No, that can't be right. Like, I'm pretty sure Romey and Michelle invented post it notes. Lol
Tabitha 1 year ago
Yeah! I mean, Michelle totally nailed the formula for the epoxy after all.
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RELATED:
#2
Reverse transcriptase which led to the development of hiv treatment was discovered by pure luck and the casual experimentation of a medical doctor and his friend in their basement lab because they enjoyed scientific research. The guy then later helped develop the first hep c vaccine. Really cool story though .
#3
Im surprised I haven’t seen this one yet, but LSD was discovered on accident. Or at least its psychedelic effects were. In 1938 a chemist named Albert Hoffman who worked for a pharmaceutical company was trying to synthesize a respiratory and circulatory stimulant from the fungus ergot. After syntonization, he set it aside for 5 years before he took another look at it and absorbed the LSD into his fingertips. He started feeling the effects as he rode his bike home that day. Essentially being the first person to trip balls on Acid.
Phil Vaive 1 year ago
They're writing on reddit, it isn't a dissertation. You understood what they were trying to say, so it was a successful communication. And before you say "I was just trying to help", you're aware that this was all taken from reddit, so the OP won't be seeing your comment - you're clearly just trying to show off how much smarter you are than everyone else.
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Mama Penguin 1 year ago
On a side note, although some scholars doubt its accuracy, there's a theory of ergot poisoning being the culprit behind some cases in the Salem witch trials. Ergot can grow on rye wheat and ergot poisoning can lead to convulsions, spasms, hallucinations.
Privacy Much 1 year ago
Acceptable Risk by Robin Cook goes over this. It's fiction/thriller, but it was thr first time I had heard the theory and thought it was fascinating.
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T. 1 year ago
Correction: After spilling it on his skin, he remarked that he shows unexpected symptoms. After that, he decided he will test by ingestion (usual dose for chemicals was 250 micrograms at the time - one dose of LSD usually is 50-100 micrograms) and then rode his bycicle home, tripping balls.
Danielle Lottem 1 year ago
Came here looking for this! I have a tattoo of the lsd molecule on the shape of a bicycle 😍
jenjie.newt 1 year ago
Sort of, not totally accurate. It can occur naturally on rye and has been potentially attributed to the stories of the "Dancing Plague" and the Pied Piper
#4
Penicillin gotta be one of them. Guy had his to now be "the cure" left open while he went on a vacation and once he came back, he noticed that the mold was suppressing the growth of bacteria.
We probs wouldn't be alive if he didn't go on that vacation and leave the dish open.
Chewie Baron 1 year ago
Alexander Fleming was the scientist. One of his students, George Albert Paine, was the first to use penicillin to treat an eye infection.
Chihuahua Mama 1 year ago
Yeah, I still dont know what the second sentence is supposed to mean
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Giles McArdell 1 year ago
Fleming actually just left a bacterial sample out to grow, when he returned he noticed a fungal growth (thought to have wafted in from another lab) that was apparently retarding the bacteria, he recorded the fact and ... didn't really do anything with it. It was actually some years (and the outbreak of WW2) before it really started to get mass produced, which is sad as many lives could have been saved in those 11 years.
Zedrapazia 1 year ago
And now people are overusing it causing resistant strains that can't be killed with it anymore. Shame
Nitka Tsar 1 year ago (edited)
Only in some countries. In Germany for example you rarely get an antibiotic. I had a pneumonia in January, where I had to take some. It didn‘t work too well, so I got another, which worked. A few weeks later I had some other kind of infection were my doctor was torn if he should give me some or not. We decided on not, as I just recently had two different ones.
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Phil Green 1 year ago
To be fair, Roman soldiers and blokes on the crusades used to carry balled up spider's webs which harboured penicillin, although they had little idea why it worked.
Daniela Lavanza 1 year ago
This should be on top of this list. Most important discovery of mankind so far to me.
#5
Bird migration. Was discovered when a large bird was found in the north with a projectile from the south stuck in it (neck i think). Before this, it was thought the birds hibernated at the bottom of water bodies or flew to the moon or other dumb s**t.
Zedrapazia 1 year ago
I have some extra information about that: The bird that was found was a stork with an arrow from an African tribe in its neck that somehow survived, came back and was found when it got too tired to fly from the injury. The most prevalent theory before this was found out is that birds would hibernate the way bears and rabbits do.
Nicole Weymann 1 year ago
Got the wiki here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfeilstorch
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Zaach 1 year ago
A flock of Canadian geese landed in a heavy-metal contaminated pool of water in a mine in Butte Montana and were immediately fried. Twenty years later a couple of researchers were working in the area and discovered that there was a bacteria in the pool that was chelating (making harmless) the heavy metals - the only other place those bacteria were ever found was in the anuses of Canadian geese
Nadine Debard 1 year ago
Oh gosh it's too early in the morning to read that. Or is there any proper time to read that?
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#6
Considering that Chauvet Cave was only discovered in 1994 but the paintings inside of it date back about 32 000 years, it's easy to believe that such remarkable evidence of early human history could have remain buried for a lot longer, or until the entrance collapsed ever further and it was lost forever.
Dragons Exist 1 year ago
Conclusion: graffiti a overpass so future archeologists can find it
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Khandi Myers 1 year ago
Some caveman mother to husband...I told him no more writing on the walls we live here. What would the neighbors think.
#7
The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum in Malta is a 5000 year old Neolithic temple which has three levels of architecture carved underground in the limestone. It’s a world heritage archeological site, and an amazing place to visit. It had been buried for maybe a couple of thousand years, and was discovered by accident in the early 1900s by someone digging out foundations for a house. They finished building the house before getting around to notifying authorities what they had found.
John Dilligaf 1 year ago
probably smart to finish building the house before notifying authorities. If he hadn't the authorities would probably have ordered them to stop building while they investigated,
#8
Glass is a very difficult material to make, and it’s thought that the ancients only discovered it once (somewhere in the Middle East), and it spread to other places from there (unlike writing and agriculture which seem to have developed independently in several places). The difficulty in glass is down to the temperatures required and finding an appropriate source of alkali that isn’t in a salt form. It’s some kind of astonishing coincidence that anyone put such random rare minerals together in an appropriate crucible and fired it to very high temperatures.
Glasses do exist in nature (lightning strikes on sand - a red herring since anyone trying to heat up sand to a similar temperature would have met with failure up until a hundred years ago or so; and obsidian for example), so some material scientist would have figured them out at some point in the Industrial Revolution or so.
But another twist we have in our timeline is glass blowing. This was invented by the Romans about a thousand years after glass production began. It’s a very unintuitive and creative way to shape glass, and requires an artistic genius to invent. Had glass only become an industrial material a hundred to so years ago, it’s almost certain that the blowing techniques that give us art and things like lightbulbs would be elusive still.
The final stepping stone is highly specialized glass such as the [dichronic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_glass) properties of the [Lycurgus cup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycurgus_Cup), which is so rare as to be unique. The color of this glass depends on whether light is reflected off its surface or shining through it, appearing either green or red respectively. Created in 400 AD, recreations of this effect are exceptionally rare today and have never been mass produced. The effect is caused by insoluble gold and silver trace impurities in the glass ripening into nanoparticles of precise size and composition by heat treatment of the glass. Almost nothing in the world has these properties. Researchers are able to make one-off batches of this kind of glass, and even embed similar particles in [3D printed plastic](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404512/), but carving a cup in glass is not yet automated and represents about two years of a skilled artisan’s time. In effect, manufacturing a glass of this color-effect and this carving is an invention that hasn’t quite occurred yet. .
EP 1 year ago
I have sooo many questions about glass but how bout one? Why did heating sand up to lightning strike temps not produce glass? And then why in the last 100 years or so, did they get it to produce glass - what changed?
M O'Connell 1 year ago
I think you may have misinterpreted the meaning. Heating ordinary sand up to lightning-strike temperatures would absolutely create glass, however building a furnace capable of reaching those temperatures would not have been possible until relatively recently.
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Connie Hirsch 1 year ago
This should be rated higher, because it really does highlight how unlikely 'glass' is. Note that obsidian is a very sought after material in the Stone Age, since it could be flaked into the sharpest knives and spear points, and is still used in some surgical instruments today.
David Paterson 1 year ago
Good quality clear glass wasn't available in Roman times. It had to wait until Venice in the 15th century. This glass sparked the scientific revolution, the lens, the spectrum, lab glassware, etc.
Certainly not Dan 1 year ago
Dichromic glass is commercially available. Schott make it, it’s expensive, but available
Marie Dahme 1 year ago
Thank you ! I was quasi correct in that Roman's did some wonderful things with glass blowing. Thanks for the refresher!
#9
Here's one that most people won't know : an audio effect called Gated Reverb. It was an accidental discovery made by Phil Collins and Hugh Padgam while they were working on Peter Gabriel's third self titled album in 1980. The effect thickens up the sound of the drums considerably by applying, in order, a reverb, a gate and a compressor. It was the result of the studio having a natural reverb, and the intercom between the studio and control room having a gate and compressor on it to make it more usable. While the effect was used on Gabriel's album, it became truly known a year later, when Collins released his first solo album, *Face Value,* which opens with *In The Air Tonight.* The effect is what makes the crescendo of that song so stunning, in contrast to the comparatively dull sound of a Roland CR-78 that was the sole percussion in the track up to that point. .
Nadine Debard 1 year ago
When I read reverb and Peter Gabriel I immediately had the sound of the drum in "In The Air Tonight"
Uncomfortable Panda 1 year ago
Here's an explanation https://youtu.be/Bxz6jShW-3E?si=LEiqy8hOYUuygzod
#10
It's unlikely it would have remained undiscovered forever, but X-rays for medical imaging!
The first x-ray image was an accidental exposure of a photographic plate the scientist's wife was holding - they didn't realise the rays would interact with it like visible light, and when they developed it her bones and wedding ring were visible.
(This may have been the first clue they needed some safety precautions, too, but honestly all the early research into ionising radiation is terrifying. They didn't know what they were dealing with. The Curie's lab/offices are still tightly controlled due to all the radium and polonium contamination, for example.).
Virginie Michaud 1 year ago
Why even bother writing a post about a discovery if you're too lazy to credit the person who made it? Roentgen discovered X-rays, Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin.
Vicky Phenny 1 year ago
Bored Panda strips content from Ask Reddit and the culture there is to answer the question asked. They were prompted to talk about inventions not inventors.
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Ace 1 year ago (edited)
Not "the scientist's wife" but "The Scientist". Yes, she happened to be married to the other scientist, but it was her work at least as much as his. And don't forget she won two Nobel prizes, he only got one. EDIT: Mea Culpa, I was indeed mixing up my scientists.
Peskie Reality 1 year ago
Madam Curie's cookbooks are kept in a lead-lined box due to their excessive radiation.
Daniela Lavanza 1 year ago
Indeed, also, thee Curie laboratory in Arcueil is still locked today because of radiations. Nuclear decontamination was started years ago but it's not done yet.
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Judy Reynolds 1 year ago
On a related note - they initially used exposures that were several minutes long, rather than the fractions of seconds that are used now.
ElfVibratorGlitter 1 year ago (edited)
The so called wife, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. She is a scientist. And while Marie curie did do extensive work with radiation, Röntgen discovered the x-ray. So this is just not accurate in any way.
ElfVibratorGlitter 1 year ago
Okay. I think I was confused because there's no mention of a name except for the end and it's the Curies. My apologies for misunderstanding.
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During World War II, a chemical engineer named James Wright was working for the U.S. War Production Board. Wright was attempting to create an inexpensive substitute for synthetic rubber at the General Electric Lab. In 1943, while working on an experiment, he accidentally dropped boric acid into silicone oil, and the result was a stretchy substance that was bouncier than rubber. Peter Hodgson, a businessman, saw the putty and instantly knew it could be a hit. He re-named the creation “Silly Putty” and marketed it as a toy in 1950.
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 1 year ago
It's also marketed as kneaded erasers for art. Very useful.
flower petals 1 year ago
I know someone whose dog is named Putty, and he is sweet and silly. 😆❤️🐶
#12
Pyrex. Chemists and engineers at Corning Glass Works had developed the material, a strong and heat-resistant glass, for use in railroad lanterns and battery jars. Looking for additional uses for the material, one Corning R&D employee brought a sawed-off battery jar home. Presumably after cleaning it his wife used it to bake a cake, and noticed and shared that the cake baked much more evenly and quickly than traditional metal or ceramic pans, with the added bonus of being able to check on the progress of the bake through the clear glass, and here we are.
Glenn Brynes 1 year ago
The original Pyrex could be heated and cooled without cracking. This is because the glass ("borosilicate") doesn't expand and contract much with temperature changes. But because it is expensive to make, the current Pyrex glass is not borosilicate unless it is PYREX (all caps).
Zaach 1 year ago
Around 1560s Prince Rupert showed the Royal Society an interesting phenomenon - he dropped some molten glass into cold water and created beads that could be beaten with a hammer w/o breaking except at the tail of the drip, hitting that would cause it to shatter. He left it to the RS to play with his discovery to eventually end up with bullet-proof glass (among other items)
Jill Rhodry 1 year ago
That stuff's ridiculously easy to clean - why don't they line ovens with it?
Regina Holt 1 year ago
about PYREX: The brand, Pyrex, has historically owned the trademark for little-p pyrex, but its parent company, Corning, has since sold it. Lowercase "pyrex" is produced by other cookware companies that don't use the heat-resistant borosilicate glass the original company does explanation found here: https://www.eatingwell.com/article/8028664/i-just-found-out-my-pyrex-isnt-a-real-pyrex-and-my-mind-is-blown/#:~:text=Pyrex%3A%20Brand%20name%20for%20cookware,in%20a%20microwave%20or%20oven.
Zedrapazia 1 year ago
We're not gonna talk about the fact that she used a *battery acid* jar that was washed out to make food in, right? People back then really had a bunch of dangerous things not figured out yet, same as radiation
#13
Rubber vulcanization. Charles Goodyear has searched for years how to make a use of rubber but the actual discovery of the vulcanization came out of luck after spilling a mixture on a hot stove.
Bill Swallow 1 year ago
The key was the addition of Sulfur to the molten rubber mixture. Before that, rubber tended to get brittle when cold, and easily melt into a gooey mess when hot. Sulfur reacted with the rubber and heat to set up molecular cross-bonds that solved both of those tendencies.
Leslie Donsen 1 year ago
I remember when the first B-2 bombers came out. There was one on display at an air show, but you weren't allowed to touch it. It actually had armed guards around it. Supposedly invisible to radar. My educated guess as to what the surface of it is? Vulcanized rubber.
TheNewJenBrady 1 year ago
I live in Goodyear, Arizona so named because it's where Goodyear tires were first manufactured.
#14
The one I heard in chemistry class was that this chemist put some chemicals in a flask and placed a mechanical stirrer in it to stir overnight. The next morning the stirrer had stopped stirring and he found the chemicals in the flask was solid and thus ultrahard polycarbonate polymer was created.
OK, since my post is rather popular I will also add that the guy who found that the stirrer was stuck in the solid polycarbonate polymer in the morning broke the glass off the flask off then went around the lab holding the stirrer handle with the polycarbonate polymer mass on it and banged on the tables around the lab saying look what I discovered.
Daniel Atkins 1 year ago
What does momma say about solid polycarbonate polymer?
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Glenn Brynes 1 year ago
What about the chemist, Roy Plunkett, who was studying refrigerant gases at DuPont, when he discovered that a full tank of tetrafluoroethylene he was using had no pressure in it. He weighed it; it was still full. So he sawed it open and found it full of a white slippery powder. Teflon was discovered!
Flora Porter 1 year ago
What does the image have to do with anything? Looks like someone googled 'flask' and downloaded the first one they saw.
#15
Oh I study math history, I can share some fun ones! Niels Abel is famous for a few things in mathematics, but the easiest one to explain is that he proved there does not exist a general formula to find the solutions to a polynomials where the highest exponent is 5 (i.e. there's no general formula to find all the solutions to something like x^(5) + x + 1 = 0). There's the quadratic formula for when your highest exponent is 2, there's another formula for when your highest exponent is 3, and another for 4, but Abel proved it's *impossible* to find one when the highest exponent is 5 or higher. It basically depends on the idea that some algebraic numbers cannot be simply represented with +, -, *, /, or exponents.
Now Abel proved this when he was 21, but Abel grew up in poverty and had no way of actually sharing this solution with others. In fact, the only reason he was able to attend college was because 3 professors offered to cover the cost because they recognized his talent. He could only afford to print 6 pages of his proof, so he had to heavily abbreviate everything, cut large chunks of his proof, *and* wrote it all in shaky French (since Norwegian isn't a common language and he wanted to share it with other mathematicians in Europe). He ends up mailing a few copies of this proof to a few mathematicians, but all of them dismiss it because it'd be an outlandish claim and nobody wanted to parse this difficult-to-read proof. In fact, Abel's letter was found unopened on Gauss's desk after Gauss died. So despite proving this major result, nobody knew about it except for Abel and the small group of mathematicians around him in Norway.
The professors at his university petitioned the government to help fund his travel around Europe to learn more math and share his work and surprisingly, the government decided to fund him. While in France, he stumbled across this guy named Crelle. Abel struck up a conversation with Crelle about math and they both started talking about unsolved problems. Crelle mentioned this problem about polynomials and Abel excited mentions that he solved that problem and showed him his proof. Crelle obviously couldn't make sense of Abel's proof, but he was so captivated by his conversation with Abel, he offered to print Abel's *full* proof. This print would later turn out to be the first publication by *Crelle's Journal*, one of the most influential journals in mathematics in all of European history. With this, people began to finally learn about Abel's proof and he began to gain some notoriety.
Unfortunately, this would not end well for Abel. Abel submits another major result (Abel's theorem) to this major publication in Paris, where a committee is formed to review the submission. Unfortunately, one of the reviewers, Cauchy, just straight up loses the paper. Abel, running out of funding for his travels, is forced to return home with no success on this publication. He also loses out on a major job opportunity that could've taken him out of poverty, all because he was deemed too young and his childhood mentor and friend, Holmboe, gets the job instead. He ends up dying of TB just a few years later at the age of 26.
Afterwards, another mathematician, Jacobi, is reading some of Abel's work and notices how great his work is. When he learns Cauchy lost Abel's paper, he pressures Cauchy to find this paper. Cauchy sends the paper off to be published posthumously, but it is lost at the printing press. It wouldn't be found for over 100 years later, in a whole other country somehow. Thankfully though, Holmboe published Abel's work separated to help share all of Abel's results and not let others forget him.
Abel's life is full of misfortune, but also great friends trying their hardest to share their friend's greatness. While Abel doesn't end up succeeding during his life, I can't help but enjoy seeing how much all of his friends cared about him, and his own ability to make friends randomly with so many people. Abel today is commonly mentioned in any undergrad group theory course because of how influential his work is on modern algebra. Without the help of people like Crelle, Holmboe, and Jacobi, we wouldn't be recognizing this work today.
Karen Krause 1 year ago
I read it all. It wasn't a hard read and I like that the author was excited about his subject.
weatherwitch 1 year ago
Lovely to see someone so enthusiastic about mathematics! Also that it's a post of information and names instead of a some bloke somewhere one day type post ❤️
The Original Bruno 1 year ago
The French mathematicians tried to understand the notes, but they weren't Abel.
Ace 1 year ago
I stopped reading before the end of the first sentence, as I suspect did 99% of readers.
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Helen Bennett 1 year ago
I enjoyed it. I'm not a maths nerd but the story of nearly-happened, nearly-failed, and people looking out for someone, is a good one.
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Julia Mckinney 1 year ago
There's a sci-fi/fantasy author who does some stories and books with the idea that math/algebra/calculus is magic in a different universe that can be reached from Earth. I just looked her up- Margaret Ball. She also has some short stories in the "Chicks in Chainmail" series.
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LynzCatastrophe 1 year ago
Gave me ptsd there with the math formula. I thought I was done with that!
Nadine Debard 1 year ago
At this point I suspect someone has deliberately lost the paper twice... Hum... Maybe 'nobody this age can be smarter than me' ?
#16
There's typically a lot of luck in artificial-sweetener discovery. Aspartame was part of anti-ulcer research, until someone licked his finger and found it was sweet. And sucralose was found to be sweet when a foreign student misread the instruction to "test" it.
Zedrapazia 1 year ago
I wonder how many other chemical products were accidentally eaten because someone didn't understand what testing is
Surenu 1 year ago
The first rule of any lab is "Don't lick the science", chemistry and sociology are very adamant about this. At least if a chemist breaks this rule something good comes out of it occasionally.
Regina Holt 1 year ago
"yeah, I'm doing science, I'm gonna lick my finger" not something an actual scientist would do. Heck, nowadays they wear gloves to protect from any substances.
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Anna Ekberg 1 year ago
I recommend people to read studies on the effects of aspartam. It is not good for us.
Midoribird Aoi 1 year ago
The guy who did the aspartame was smoking in the lab and brushed loose tobacco off his mustache when he accidentally tasted his finger and boom! Artificial sugar! Also, to quote sci channel's Hank, "SMOKING IN THE LAB!"
JK 1 year ago
Aspartame is an E number (E 951) that was given an actual name so big brands could get round the term "contains no E numbers). It is carcinogenic, it has links to cancers affecting the brain, brain tumours, causes migraines/severe headaches in many (including me) and more nastiness is discovered regularly. But it is cheap to make and all big brands use it (Coca Cola/Schwepes, Wrigles, R Whites, 7UP, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, Lucozade etc etc) so despite the WHO findings, it is NOT being banned!!
#17
The current use for Viagra. It was originally meant for high blood pressure, then the men in the study noted a side effect.
Seconc-Creative:
IIRC, while effective at lowering blood pressure, it was in a weird place where it was better than a placebo, but worse than actual blood pressure medication. However, its still sometimes prescribed to help control blood pressure.
Jill Jones 1 year ago
I take 120mg a day to stay alive, for pulmonary arterial hypertension. I am also female.
Whitefox 1 year ago
When I worked in a pediatric hospital we had and infant female on it. Saved her life too.
Load More Replies... Corvus 1 year ago
"the men in the study noted a side effect" - Gee, I wonder what the effect was :D
Ryan 1 year ago
It was developed for pulmonary hypertension not hypertension. Pulmonary hypertension is high pressure between heart and lungs as opposed to systemic hypertension which is high pressure between heart and organs. It is used for pulmonary hypertension in humans as well as its more common side effect
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
You take the blue pill and you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbithole goes...
Hphizzle 1 year ago
My sister’s dog was prescribed it. So it’s used for animal blood pressure issues, too.
CF 1 year ago
Yea, it's used for pulmonary hypertension in dogs. (Presumably people too, but I'm a DVM not MD)
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Jennifer Lynn 1 year ago
Not actually strictly blood pressure- it's specifically for pulmonary hypertension and is still used for such occasionally
#18
Color changing glass. Accidentally discovered in the 90’s by a bowl maker and was given free to the world. Dude could’ve been immensely wealthy being the only person who knew how to make a glass bowl change colors.
Marie Dahme 1 year ago
Wait, I thought the ancient Roman's had discovered a unique process for making glass ? Was it color changing glass ?
Steve Hall 1 year ago
Color changing glass reacts to hot or cold and changes color.
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Glenn Brynes 1 year ago
The glass is "dichroic" meaning that light that is reflected from the surface is of a different color than light that passes through it. This means that if the glass is between you and the light source (transmitted light) it is a different color than if it is to the side (reflected light).
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I’m not sure if this counts, but Tetsuhiro Shikiyama (founder of Nippura, the company that makes thick acrylic glass for aquariums) invented the tech that glues/fuses multiple layers of clear acrylic when he dropped a udon noodle he was eating on some acrylic and had a hard time picking it up because it stuck.
Kathleen McGann 1 year ago
Not new. Just inspiration. The combo of water and flour is called paste. It's been used for millennia as glue and as noodles (pasta means "paste" in Italian)
#20
Czochralski process, the baseline of modern electronics as nearly all of the electronics nowadays are made on silicon grown with this process.
Guy wanted to dip his pen in ink, he dipped it in a crucible with molten tin instead.
Max Fox 1 year ago
"I have the black liquid in a glass jar, and I have an extremely hot crucible with boiling metal, and unless I make sure to pay attention, I keep on mixing the two up!! I mean, yesterday, I confused a molten copper with a glass of beer, and I was about to drink it, when my lab assistant stopped me!"
#21
The Precambrian Ediacara fossils in Australia. They were discovered in 1946 by mining engineer Reginald Sprigg who habitually looked for fossils wherever he was. Although there had been mining in South Australia's Ediacaran Hills since the 1880s nobody had looked for fossils there before because: 1) much of the rock was sandstone, not the best mineral for preserving invertebrates; 2) the formation was Precambrian, which was considered earlier than Earth's first multicellular life.
Apatheist Account2 1 year ago
So, fossils discovered by someone who looks for fossils? Doesn't belong here.
Hashim Siraj 1 year ago (edited)
It was the fact that he discovered a fossil of multicellular life before multicellular life was presumed to have existed that made it impressive. And a smooth brain doing smooth brain things doesn’t belong here either but here you are. EDIT: I was trying to inform them of the reason for the post being in the article. However I apologise as I saw the phrasing of his post as negative and responded coldly and callously which he does not deserve. I would comment on Krystal’s post but I am unable to comment as of yet.
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#22
A brown dwarf called "The Accident". A guy, Dan Caselden, in the citizen science group I'm I'm found it on accident while looking at another object that looked promising. It didn't stand out in the larger context of the sample but was clearly a good candidate when looking at the other object more closely. To add on to the uniqueness of the discovery, it's the fastest moving near earth brown dwarf found and possibly one of the oldest. It's a major outlier for Y-class Dwarfs.
Marie Dahme 1 year ago
Check out Professor Dave o. YOUTUBE. he has lots of short informative videos on astronomy and cosmology and the classification of stars
JustAnotherPanda (she/they/he) 1 year ago
And kursgesagt, who says brown dwarfs are a huge failure to their moms LOL
Load More Replies... Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 1 year ago
Hobbits are cuter than dwarfs, and they smell better, too.
Itsme 1 year ago
"... in the citizen science group I'm I'm found ... " Ever heard of proofreading, lady? You want to know what was an accident: this writer's birth. Guarantee you her parents never saw it coming.
Upstaged75 1 year ago
Do you enjoy being a jackass and getting downvotes? It certainly appears that you do....
Load More Replies... #23
Maybe not undiscovered till today but probably good time later.
Dry cleaning. The way i got told there was an french chemist who did regularly experiments in the kitchen and got into trouble regularly with his wife. One day he did his thing and spilled some stuff and used one of the towel to clean up to prevent more discussions. The wife then discovered the towel was much cleaner than usual and so dry cleaning.
EP 1 year ago
I don’t even know what dry cleaning is. I know I drop the clothes and pick them up. I have no understanding of what the clothes go through there.
Sven Grammersdorf 1 year ago
It's basically the same as washing your clothes, except you use a solvent other than water
Load More Replies... Jossh Nine 1 year ago
"This shirt is dry clean only....which means it's dirty" - Mitch Hedberg
Vermonta 1 year ago
I worked at a dry cleaner until I almost vomited from the stuff people brought in. For dry cleaning a person spot cleans the garment and then puts it in the chemical machine. Anything you take that does not say dry clean only or you request it be dry cleaned only then the garment will be washed in soap and water in a washing machine.And for the people that are commenting on grammar and dangling participles - this is why nobody likes you.
Ace 1 year ago
Perhaps you should read up on it then. Dry cleaning does not 'remove' dirt, it dissolves it, leaving behind just a colourless residue which can then be brushed or shaken off.
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#24
Parakaryon Myojinensis. It's not necessarily a very important discovery to most people, but it's an extremely unusual microbe that isn't quite a eukaryote or prokaryote. Biologists think that it could represent some sort of "stepping stone" between the two, or even an example of abiogenesis happening multiple times throughout the history of the earth. We've only found one of these, though, so we don't know much about it.
The Original Bruno 1 year ago (edited)
To simplify: Cells and organelles both have a membrane which controls their chemical environment, allowing for all the chemical reactions which make life work. Procaryotes are simple organisms, single cells without organelles. The thought is that at one point, a procaryote began living within another procaryote. The organisms mutliplied, and had descendents wherein a stable number of procaryotes lived within other procaryotes. Eventually they evolved to optimize the conditions for this "symbiotic" relationships, with the inner cells evolving to become mitochondria, plastics [Oops. Meant to type "plastids"], nuclei, etc. These new, more complex organisms are called "eucaryotes," and they all have so much in common that it's believed they all descended from the same symbiotic organisms. But pM meets the definition of a eucaryote, but doesn't have all those other traits in common, so the thought is that evolution of one organism living symbiotically within a cell of another organism happened more that just the one time.
Bill Swallow 1 year ago
"evolving to become mitochondria, plastics, nuclei, etc." Plastics?
Load More Replies... and_a_touch_of_the_’tism 1 year ago
Holy cow that’s so cool! I’ve never heard of this before! Also upvote for use of abiogenesis :D
#25
Gunpowder? One day some Chinese alchemist just wanted to brew a concoction and he end up paving the way for the death of billions.
Petra Schaap 1 year ago
knowing the way BP uses unrelated pictures are we sure this isnt a picture of licorice sprinkles?
Michael Largey 1 year ago
The OP used neither phrase. She said "brewing a concoction" and "paving the way", both standard usages in English. Ever thought about taking a reading class?
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Tamra 1 year ago
Each of these entries are cut and pasted from Reddit, and are all written by different individuals.
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#26
The microwave oven.
SillyPandaBunny 1 year ago
BP why are you showing us a toaster oven when this says. Microwave oven. Who is picking these photos? BP is getting so lazy, most of the photos on this one don’t match the descriptions
EP 1 year ago
I do not appreciate 3 words. I require a reason for how it was discovered by accident.
User# 6 1 year ago
Really short version: dude standing next to a powerfull radar noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket melted. Long version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y
Load More Replies... The Original Bruno 1 year ago
I'm'onna put this down as inevitable discovery. The heating properties of microwaves were well known; my [redacted] tells us of frying eggs on radar dishes in the Korean war.
Ephemera Image 1 year ago
Gotta love AI choosing totally unrelated images, lol. Does no-one proof these articles?
Dan St John 1 year ago
When I was in the military, way before microwave ovens, we use to cook hotdogs in the radar systems using the microwaves to cook them. We could do other things with them too, but probably shouldn't pass those on.
#27
Inkjet printers. discovered by accident, when a Canon engineer set a hot iron next to his pen, only to find moments later that his pen has begun to leak ink.
EP 1 year ago
I guess I don’t know how inkjet printers work bc I’m not understanding how leaving a hot iron next to a pen (and making it leak ink) gave the idea for inkjet printer? Wouldn’t everyone already know that ink is liquid? Or that pens would melt near heat and leak. I must not understand a large component here bc I’m missing the reveal. Help!
Corvus 1 year ago
I suppose it has to do with heat causing the ink to expand and leak out in a controlled manner (as long as the heat is controlled as well).
Load More Replies... Laura Williams 1 year ago
Well that explains the heat from them. I worried it was gonna die soon.
Remi (He/Him) 1 year ago
No use complaining here. You can reach the writer by following the source link to Reddit and commenting on grammar directly to the original poster.
Load More Replies... #28
Champagne. At least according to Stanley Goodspeed in The Rock - "monks thought they were making white wine. Somehow the bottle carbonated. Voila**, champagne".
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
Supposedly the monk who went to check on the wine, having tasted it, then ran upstairs shouting "come quickly! I'm drinking starlight!"
M Kovacs 1 year ago
Contrary to legend and popular belief, Dom Pérignon did not invent sparkling wine, though he did make important contributions to the production and quality of both still and sparkling Champagne wines. In France, the first sparkling champagne was created accidentally; the pressure in the bottle led it to be called "the devil's wine" (le vin du diable), as bottles exploded or corks popped. At the time, bubbles were considered a fault. In 1844, Adolphe Jaquesson invented the muselet to prevent the corks from blowing out.
Michael Largey 1 year ago
Now I've got that song "The Night They Invented Champagne" running in my head.
Itsme 1 year ago
Thanks for telling us how this worked. Yeast is added to the mixture that has sugar. The yeast consume the sugar and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. If you bottle it while it has sugar left in it and don't stop the fermentation, in the sealed bottle, the CO2 dissolves into the liquid. This is how beer was also originally carbonated before that Kathrine Hepburn knockoff took over.
#29
Stainless Steel. A batch of steel got contaminated so it was dumped. Someone noticed the dumped steel wasn't rusting.
Certainly not Dan 1 year ago
Very much not an accident but the result of years of research and development. The people of Sheffield would like a word
UKGrandad 1 year ago
If memory serves, the aim was to be able to produce cutlery that had the appearance of silver, didn't tarnish like silver (or silver plate/epns) or rust like iron, and was affordable for the masses. Definitely a deliberate invention.
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What do you think ?
Chewie Baron 1 year ago
Linoleum was discovered by accident after a Scottish engineer left a tin of paint open overnight by accident.
Julia French 1 year ago
BP really needs to work harder on getting better/more accurate pictures!
Justin Rogers 1 year ago
This author (termed loosely) is horrible. Forget punctuation. Nothing cohesive. Most of the founders were left out and half right. Epitome of copy paste for a paycheck. Maybe if they were more concerned about doing a good job rather than playing/traveling it wouldn't be so painful to read/understand
Salty_Sasquatch 1 year ago
Did I miss the paragraph that talked about dumped steel not rusting?
Little king trash mouth 1 year ago
Ughhhh why are these posts all cut off on iOS?? It's happening with so many pb articles now
Chewie Baron 1 year ago
Linoleum was discovered by accident after a Scottish engineer left a tin of paint open overnight by accident.
Julia French 1 year ago
BP really needs to work harder on getting better/more accurate pictures!
Justin Rogers 1 year ago
This author (termed loosely) is horrible. Forget punctuation. Nothing cohesive. Most of the founders were left out and half right. Epitome of copy paste for a paycheck. Maybe if they were more concerned about doing a good job rather than playing/traveling it wouldn't be so painful to read/understand
Salty_Sasquatch 1 year ago
Did I miss the paragraph that talked about dumped steel not rusting?
Little king trash mouth 1 year ago
Ughhhh why are these posts all cut off on iOS?? It's happening with so many pb articles now
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