You

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Youre my favorite mistake..Some of the things
we love the most were an accident
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Coca-Cola

• In 1886, a pharmacist named John Pemberton was
  trying to create a tonic for people who were
  tired, nervous, or had sore teeth. In a large
  kettle, he mixed up a medicinal syrup.  At first,
  he mixed it with cold water, and thought it was
  good.  When he went back for more, his assistant
  has mistakenly mixed carbonated water in the
  second batch, which made it fizzy - just as it is
  today.  Although it took a while for it to catch
  on (it cost Pemberton more to promote it than he
  made off it), eventually Coca-Cola became a
  beverage sold around the world.

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Implantable Pacemaker

• The Pacemaker was an accident that actually saves
  lives today. Wilson Greatbatch 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.  He worked with it for about two years and
  eventually made the first implantable pacemaker.
•  Before the implantable pacemaker was invented,
  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 later invented a corrosion-free
  lithium battery to power the pacemaker.

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Potato Chips

• Yes, potato chips were a surprise invention,
  too.  In 1853, George Crum, a chef at a resort in
  Saratoga, New York, made french-fried potatoes
  for a guest.  The guest disapproved of the fries
  and sent them back, asking that they be sliced a
  little thinner.  This happened twice, so the chef
  got a little miffed, so to get even,  he sliced
  the potatoes very thin and fried them so that the
  guest would not be able to eat them with a fork. 
  Well, it turned out that the guest was ecstatic
  about the crisp potatoes.  Other diners began
  requesting them and they soon appeared on the
  menu as Saratoga Chips.
• In the 1920s, Herman Lay, a traveling salesman,
  began selling the chips from the trunk of his
  car.  Today, everyone's heard of Lays Potato
  Chips.

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Penicillin

• 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.  He noticed the mold was dissolving the
  harmful bacteria. And that's how we got
  penicillin, which helps people around the world
  recover from infections.

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Velcro

• The hook and loop fastener was invented in 1948
  by Georges de Mestral, a Swiss engineer. The idea
  came to him after he took a close look at the
  seed pod burrs which kept sticking to his dog on
  their daily walk in the Alps. De Mestral named
  his invention "VELCRO" after the French words
  velours, meaning 'velvet', and crochet, meaning
  'hook'.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

• One of the most favorite cookies of all time was
  invented (accidentally) by Ruth Wakefield, an
  innkeeper.  She was baking Butter Drop Do cookies
  one day, using a recipe that dated back to
  colonial times. Wanting chocolate cookies, she
  cut up a Nestlé chocolate bar and put the chunks
  in the batter. When she took them out of the
  oven, she expected to find chocolate-flavored
  cookies. Instead, what she got were butter
  cookies with gooey chocolate chips. Aren't we
  glad that happened?

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Ice cream cones

• Two vendors had their stands beside each other at
  the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. 
  One of the vendors was selling a wafer-thin
  Persian waffle called zalabia.  The other vendor
  was selling ice cream.  It got so hot during the
  fair that the vendors ran out of dishes for the
  Ice cream.  The waffle vendor rolled a waffle
  into a cone shape he topped it with some of his
  neighbor's ice cream.  The ice cream cone was a
  total hit at the worlds fair.

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Post-it notes

• Yellow sticky notes (Post-it Notes) were about to
  be invented in 1968 when a 3M researcher tried to
  improve adhesive tape. He came up with a
  semi-sticky adhesive - not suitable for tape, but
  he thought it could have a use for something
  else, he just didn't know what.
• A few years later, another 3M scientist was
  needing a way to keep his bookmarks from falling
  out of his hymnal while he sang with his church
  choir.  He needed something that would stick
  without being permanent.  He remembered the weak
  glue his colleague had accidentally created 4
  years before. In 1980 the Post-it Note was
  created.

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Slinky

• Who didnt have a Slinky when they were a kid? If
  you didn't have one, I'm sure you at least played
  with one at some time.  Slinkies are part of
  modern Americana.
• The Slinky was invented by accident. In the early
  1940s, a spring fell off the desk of a marine
  engineer named Richard James. It tumbled end over
  end across the floor. This new invention hit toy
  store shelves in 1948, and the rest is history.
• To manufacture his new creation, Richard James
  designed and engineered machines to transform 80
  feet of wire into a 2 1/2 inch tall stack of 98
  coils. Boom, he had a Slinky making machine.
  Today, the Hollidaysburg, PA based factory churns
  out 3 million to 4 million Slinkies a year. Mrs.
  James, who came up with the name "Slinky" has
  been chief executive officer since 1960.

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• Source
• http//www.chiggerridge.com/accidental_inventions/
  accidental_inventions_index.htm\
• Submitted by Erik Murray RA at University of
  Massachusetts, Dartmouth