Top discoveries that happened by accident

The history of science knows many cases where scientists spent years looking for the answer to one question, only to accidentally find something completely different. Sometimes the cause was a Petri dish forgotten in the laboratory, sometimes the negligence of a researcher, and occasionally an unexpected side effect of a new medication.

What these discoveries have in common is that most people would have simply ignored the accident. However, the scientists managed to see a pattern in it, which subsequently changed medicine, industry, and the daily lives of millions of people.

Viagra: a heart medication turned out to be the solution to a completely different problem

In the early 1990s, the British pharmaceutical company Pfizer was developing a drug called sildenafil to treat angina pectoris and high blood pressure. Researchers hoped that the new remedy would dilate the blood vessels of the heart and improve blood supply to the myocardium.

However, during clinical trials, it turned out that the expected effect was quite modest. On the other hand, male participants in the study began to report another unusual result — a persistent improvement in erection. Moreover, many volunteers were in no hurry to return the remaining pills after the trials ended.

Scientists quickly realized that they were facing not a side inconvenience, but a completely new direction for the drug's application. By 1998, the drug under the trade name Viagra was approved for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and became one of the most famous medicines in the world.

Saccharin: the discovery started with unwashed hands

In 1879, chemist Constantin Fahlberg was working in the laboratory of American scientist Ira Remsen, researching coal tar compounds.

After a long workday, Fahlberg went to have dinner and suddenly noticed that the bread tasted unusually sweet. He soon realized that the sweet taste did not come from the food, but from his fingers — the scientist had simply forgotten to wash his hands thoroughly after working in the lab.

Returning to his samples, Fahlberg managed to identify the substance that possessed the extremely sweet taste. This is how saccharin was discovered — the world's first artificial sweetener, which later became widely used in the food industry.

Today, saccharin is primarily known as a sugar substitute for people with diabetes and those who restrict their calorie intake.

Penicillin: a forgotten Petri dish saved millions of lives

The discovery of penicillin is considered one of the most famous accidents in the history of science.

In 1928, British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming was studying staphylococci. Before going on vacation, he left several Petri dishes with bacterial cultures in the laboratory.

Upon his return, the scientist found that one of the dishes had become contaminated with a mold fungus. Normally, such an experiment would just be thrown away, but Fleming noticed an unusual detail: the bacteria had completely disappeared around the mold colony.

It was later revealed that the Penicillium fungus secretes a substance that destroys bacteria. This is how the first antibiotic was discovered, marking the beginning of a new era in medicine and saving hundreds of millions of human lives.