•Isaac Newton's famed apple falling from a tree, led to his musings about the nature

of gravitation.
•The German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz dreamed about
Ourobouros, a snake running around and forming a circle, leading to his solution of
the closed chemical structure of cyclic compounds, such as benzene.
•Archimedes' prototypical cry of Eureka when he realised that his body displacing
water in the bathtub allowed him to measure the volume of any irregular body, such
as a gold crown.
•Penicillin by Alexander Fleming. He failed to disinfect cultures of bacteria when
leaving for his vacations, only to find them contaminated with Penicillium molds,
which killed the bacteria. However, he had previously done extensive research into
antibacterial substances.

•The anesthetic nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Initially well known for inducing
altered behavior (hilarity), its properties were discovered when British chemist
Humphry Davy tested the gas on himself and some of his friends, and soon realized
that nitrous oxide considerably dulled the sensation of pain, even if the inhaler were
still semi-conscious.

•Bioelectricity, by Luigi Galvani. He was dissecting a frog at a table where he had

been conducting experiments with static electricity; Galvani's assistant touched an
exposed sciatic nerve of the frog with a metal scalpel, which had picked up a
charge, provoking a muscle contraction.

•Vaccination, discovered by English physician Edward Jenner, after he observed that

milkmaids did not catch smallpox after exposure to benign cowpox.

•Discovery of the planet Uranus by William Herschel. Herschel was looking for
comets, and initially identified Uranus as a comet until he noticed the circularity of
its orbit and its distance and suggested that it was a planet, the first one discovered
since antiquity.

•S. N. Bose discovered Bose-Einstein statistics when a mathematical error

surprisingly explained anomalous data.

•X rays, by Wilhelm Roentgen. Interested in investigating cathodic ray tubes, he

noted that some fluorescent papers in his lab were illuminated at a distance
although his apparatus had an opaque cover

•Electromagnetism, by Hans Christian Oersted. While he was setting up his

materials for a lecture, he noticed a compass needle deflecting from magnetic north
when the electric current from the battery he was using was switched on and off.

•Discovery of the principle behind inkjet printers by a Canon engineer. After putting
his hot soldering iron by accident on his pen, ink was ejected from the pen's point a
few moments later.
•Corn flakes and wheat flakes were accidentally discovered by the Kelloggs brothers
in 1898, when they left cooked wheat untended for a day and tried to roll the mass,
obtaining a flaky material instead of a sheet.

•Polyethylene by Hans von Pechmann, who prepared it by accident in 1898 while

heating diazomethane.

•Teflon, by Roy J. Plunkett, who was trying to develop a new gas for refrigeration
and got a slick substance instead that was used first for lubrication of machine
parts.

•Cyanoacrylate-based Superglue (Krazy Glue) was accidentally twice discovered by

Dr. Harry Coover, first when he was developing a clear plastic for gunsights and
later, when he was trying to develop a heat-resistant polymer for jet canopies.

•Cellophane, a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose, was

developed in 1908 by Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger, as a material for
covering stain-proof tablecloth.

•Rayon, the first synthetic silk, was discovered by French chemist Hilaire de
Chardonnet, an assistant to Louis Pasteur. He spilled a bottle of collodion and found
later that he could draw thin strands from the evaporated viscous liquid.

+--hemus--+
cheers jaMeniaNs.!