The Greatest Mistakes of All Time

[SamBlaZ!ng]

The Greatest Mistakes of All Time


Sit down. Pour yourself a Coke, have a chocolate chip cookie--whatever you like. Then, grab a yellow sticky note and write this down:

MISTAKES ARE GOOD

You may have heard this before, but I bet you still hate the idea of screwing up and embarrassing yourself in front of everybody. This is understandable. We aren't very nice to people who make mistakes.

Unless you somehow manage not to do anything ever again, you will mess up, somehow, somewhere. I promise.

If you have the right frame of mind, though, that mistake could turn out to be one of the most valuable, most important, most memorable, or most delicious accidents in history.

It's happened before--too many times for me to describe without giving you severe eyestrain. There's a great little book on the topic called Mistakes that Worked, by Charlotte Foltz Jones. It's written for kids, but it's the sort of thing that's a fun read even for adults.

I've picked my favorite mistakes from history, science, and folklore. Some are familiar. We already know, for instance, that Christopher Columbus meant to sail to Asia, not America.

We may never have pondered other mistakes, however. Where would Jack be if his mother hadn't tossed his magic beans out the window? Not up the beanstalk getting golden eggs from the giant's goose, that's for sure.

And where would Cinderella be had she not dropped her glass slipper? Cleaning the fireplace, that's where. (By the way, did you know that the original Cinderella story had her wearing a fur shoe? A French writer made a mistake when he wrote the story down in 1697, confusing two homonyms--vair, an Old French word for fur, and verre, which is French for glass. But it was a good mistake, making for much more romantic story, and much better fashion.)

And now for the rest ...

Coca-Cola, chocolate chip cookies, and yellow sticky notes

Did you wonder why I invited you to have a snack at the beginning of this story? It was because both Coca-Cola and chocolate chip cookies were mistakes--or at least unexpected delights. And yellow sticky notes were the result of a failure. Here's what happened.

Innkeeper Ruth Wakefield was baking Butter Drop Do cookies one day in the 1930s using a recipe that dated back to colonial times. She cut up a Nestlé chocolate bar and put the chunks in the batter, expecting them to melt. Wakefield thought she'd be pulling chocolate-flavored cookies out of the oven. Instead, what she got were butter cookies studded with gooey chocolate chips. Her mistake became one of the most favorite cookies of all time.

Coca-Cola was the result of another delicious accident. In 1886 a pharmacist named John Pemberton cooked up a medicinal syrup in a large brass kettle slung over an open fire, stirring it with an oar. When he was done, he figured he had created a fine tonic for people who were tired, nervous, or plagued with sore teeth.

He and his assistant mixed it with ice water, sipped it, and proclaimed it tasty. They wanted some more, and the assistant accidentally used carbonated water to mix the second batch. Voila! Instead of medicine, these men had created a fizzy beverage--one that is now consumed around the world.

Today people guzzle 1 billion drinks a day from the Coca-Cola company (they make more than Coke). Even more encouraging for us everyday screw-ups: This new beverage wasn't an instant success. In the first year, Pemberton spent $73.96 promoting his new product but managed to sell only $50 worth.

Yellow sticky notes, officially known as Post-it Notes, got their start in 1968 when a 3M researcher tried to improve adhesive tape. What he got was a semisticky adhesive--not exactly what you want out of tape. Even so, he knew he had something cool--he just didn't know what to do with it.

Four years later, another 3M scientist was getting frustrated. This scientist was a member of his church choir, and he kept dropping the bookmarks stuck in his hymnal. What he needed was something that would stick without being too sticky--something just like that weak glue his colleague had accidentally created. In 1980 the Post-it Note became an official product and a huge hit.

(Another 3M scientist came up with a cool substance called Scotchgard, which helps prevent dirt from staining fabric. But that wasn't what she set out to create: Scotchgard grew out of an attempt to make a synthetic rubber to be used in airplane fuel lines. One day some of the new substance spilled on her assistant's canvas shoe, and they couldn't get it off. As the tennis shoe grew older, it got dingy--everywhere except where the substance had spilled. It took three more years of tinkering, but they had their Scotchgard.)

Tires and Silly Putty

Rubber got its name when English scientist Joseph Priestley discovered that a wad of it was good at "rubbing out" pencil mistakes on paper. But the rubber really hit the road--literally--when someone figured out how to stabilize it for use in boots, tires, and the like. The problem was that rubber melted if it got too hot and shattered if it got too cold.

A colorful character named Charles Goodyear tried to fix this problem in several ways, but it wasn't until (according to legend) he accidentally dropped a blob of rubber and sulfur on a hot stove that he found something that worked. Goodyear denied this was a mistake, but the point is that he had the savvy to know he was on to something good.

Rubber shortages during World War II prompted the U.S. government to look for a synthetic rubber. It seemed like a good idea to try to make this substitute for rubber out of something plentiful, and researchers eventually settled on silicone. An inventor at General Electric added a little boric acid to silicone oil and developed a gooey, bouncy substance.

This substance failed as a substitute for rubber, but after the war it became an extremely popular toy known as Silly Putty. Apollo 8 astronauts later used it to stabilize their tools in zero gravity. (The astronauts carried their Silly Putty in sterling silver eggs.) Today, Binney & Smith (the company that makes Silly Putty) produces 20,000 eggs' worth of Silly Putty a day.

The implantable cardiac pacemaker and penicillin

Some errors have saved lives. Before Wilson Greatbatch came along, people with irregular heartbeats had to control their pulse using a sometimes painful external device invented in 1952 by Paul Zoll. The external pacemaker was about the size of a small television, and administered life-saving jolts of electricity, which sometimes burned the skin.

Greatbatch, a medical researcher, was working on a device to record irregular heartbeats when he accidentally inserted a resistor of the wrong size. He noticed that the circuit pulsed, stopped, and pulsed again--just like a human heart.

After two years of tinkering, Greatbatch had made the first implantable pacemaker. He later invented a corrosion-free lithium battery to power it, and millions have benefited.

Penicillin is another famous example of a mistake turned good. In 1928 scientist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold spores had contaminated one of the bacteria samples he had left by an open window. Instead of discarding his ruined experiment, Fleming took a close look and noticed the mold was dissolving the harmful bacteria. And that's how we got penicillin, which helps people around the world recover from infections.

This brings to mind a powerful quote by scientist Louis Pasteur, "Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind," and another, by writer James Joyce, "Mistakes are the portals for discovery."

What they mean is that you should look carefully--and study your errors. You may find things you were never looking for, things that could change the world, or at the very least, taste really good.                    

[Lagamus]

Good grief, that was long.  

When I was 8 I shit my pants and that is one mistake I never made since.  Sometimes you don't need an invention, you just need to know that it's a bad idea and don't do it again.                    

[Waggy]

Fixing my glasses with a cup of coke in my hand. Infront a special girl.
Then laughing it off, but then to go into a coughing seizure.                    

[SamBlaZ!ng]

Good grief, that was long.  

When I was 8 I crap my pants and that is one mistake I never made since.  Sometimes you don't need an invention, you just need to know that it's a bad idea and don't do it again.

REALLY TO MUCH INFO                    

[Rampage]

ent boy samblazing, lawd father                    

[Frozen]

The greatest mistake was ppl makin money....everything shud be for free                    

[Warlock]

GREATEST MISTAKE...
This is why is stopped Dueling

The guy opposite me said with a serious face!
"I'M PRETTY SURE I CAN <CHANGE OF HEART> YOUR <CHANGE OF HEART>"                    

[hiddenagenda]

Good grief, that was long.  

When I was 8 I crap my pants and that is one mistake I never made since.  Sometimes you don't need an invention, you just need to know that it's a bad idea and don't do it again.

AHAHAHAHA
RORLF
AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA                    

[Bourbon_Shihan]

all of us make mistakes and mistakes should be like battles we should try our best to win all though loosing is inevitable we should choose the battles we can loose and the ones we must win ie when we should or should not make mistakes.

[ShowTime]

i find people should start to make misgives.  then maybe they won't make mistakes.

                     

[Frozen]

that shud be under the stale jokes forum                    

[ShowTime]

yea, i would have but i didn't think anyone would hav understood it.  in this thread, it has background.  well, if im wrong it's just another mistake that might result in something good.                    

[orginalvexman]

mistake to me  is making the mistake of the mistake of making the mistake in making the mistake                    

[ShowTime]

ok, now ur just trying too hard, and ya know the sad thing?  i actually think i understood that.

 :shock:                    

[Lost_Soul]

Coca Cola was a great mistake. Thank god for it. Can't live without my coke.                    

[ShowTime]

this thread is very old.  maybe bringing it back up was a mistake                    

[snake_eater]

ah mistake s a every day ting......................                    

[Junior]

my greastest mistake was that time when i was 8 and broke my moms favourite vase rollerbladin in the house yep i got punished for that                    

[New Era Outlaw]

My biggest mistake was sticking my hand in a running blender to free up some bread that stick in the blades....anybody remember that genius mistake?

And ever since then...[sniff]
I'VE HAD A PHOBIA OF BLENDERS!!!!

Mr. Ed: You mean...like THIS?!



Me:  :shock:
[screams like a frwaking gyul]
Yoooouuuu Bastaarrrrrd......*

Mr. Ed: