List of discoveries influenced by chance circumstances

[2] Major everyday discoveries that were helped by luck in some way include products like vulcanized rubber, teflon, nylon, penicillin, cyanoacrylate (Super Glue), the implantable pacemaker[citation needed], the microwave oven, Scotchgard, Saran wrap, Silly Putty, Slinky, safety glass,[3] propeller, snowmaking[citation needed], stainless steel, Perkin's mauve, and popsicles.

[2] Such archeological discoveries as the Rosetta Stone, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ruins of Pompeii also emerged partly out of serendipity.

According to a legend, Archimedes realized his principle on hydrostatics when he entered in a bath full of water, which overflows (he then shouted out his famous "Eureka!").

And the unexpected, negative results of the Michelson–Morley experiment in their search of the luminiferous aether ultimately led to the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein.

Nobel cut his finger on a piece of glass one day at work and subsequently applied collodion in order to form a protective layer over the wound (similar in principle to liquid bandage).

Roberts reports that Nobel then realized that collodion (which he was using to dress his wound) could allow the two substances to combine, which led to the invention of blasting gelatin (as powerful as dynamite but much safer to handle).

"[1] Pasteur later prepared a solution of only racemic acid and found that it itself contained salt crystals with chirality and which affected light differently.

Pasteur reasoned that the "attenuated" microbes in the spoiled batch "'used up' something within the body; something that wasn't there for the fully functional bacteria to eat.

Newton's reflections that led him to his theories about gravity started when he saw an apple fall from a tree
Pasteur was lucky to be using a particular kind of acid salt, but also lucky that he left his solution on a window sill overnight. Otherwise there would have been no chemical reaction, and his genius would have had nothing to notice and interpret. [ 1 ]