Food Mistakes Into Miracles

Everybody loves popsicles on a hot day, and why not? It's delicious ice on a stick! This was accidentally made when little Frank Epperson (who was 11 years old at the time) was making a glass of powdered soda and water outside, and forgot it overnight. It froze, with the stick still in, and the rest is history.

This artificial sweetener was discovered very organically. When James M. Schlatter was trying to make an anti-ulcer drug, he was synthesizing aspartame and accidentally licked his fingers. This breach of nearly every safety protocol resulted in the discovery of aspartame's sweet flavour.

You know when a kid get's told to "clean their room," and in response, they go to the extreme by washing the baseboards with a toothbrush and a scowl? Well, George Crumb was doing just that when a customer sent back some potato wedges, complaining that they were "too thick." The resultant hissy-fit by Mr. Crumb created one of the most iconic snacks of all time.

Rumor has it, Edward Wilson and/or Clarence J. Schwebke were using a machine to make puffed corn animal feed. Like many great innovators before them, they thought to themselves "I should eat that" and decided to bring it home. After frying and adding cheese, the cheese puffs were delicious. Delicious former animal feed.

W.K. Kellogg was trying to make a granola for the sanitarium. He had left some cooked wheat to sit for a bit while he attended to some other tasks. When he came back, he found the wheat had gone stale, but, being on a strict budget, he decided to try and save it. Running it through some rollers, he found the wheat flaked. A couple of experiments later, and corn flakes were born.

The exact origins of Worchestershire Sauce is somewhat unclear. One account says that a British Nobleman returned from a tip to India and wanted a recreation of one of the sauces he sampled. However, the local chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, could not produce the exact sauce the nobleman wanted, so it was left in the basement. Some time later, the pair of chemists decided to sample the old, fermented solution. Worcestershire Sauce was born.

Sam Panoloulus invented Hawaiian Pizza in his restaurant in 1962. He owned a Chinese and pizza restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada and decided to experiment with different ingredients. Pizza was a new thing and he didn't even know what was supposed to go on top.