Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

Re:Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pi... by jyounker on Thursday December 19, 2024 @03:53AM (#42459646)

> Why does it always have to be an accident?

Because that's a surprisingly common way for things to be discovered.

Saccharine? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet.

Aspartame? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet.

I think this is true of basically every major artificial sweetener except invert sugar.

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Re:Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pi... by rob74 on Thursday December 19, 2024 @05:42AM (#42460240)

Same as the famous discovery of Penicillin in a petri dish contaminated with a mold that killed off the bacteria?

...but now I'm starting to wonder how many people working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and died, because they had accidentally discovered a toxin?

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Re:Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pi... by Eisenstein on Thursday December 19, 2024 @07:03AM (#42460644)

Except it happened to be in a petri dish and it happened to be observed at the time by a scientist. Total accident!

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Re:Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pi... by bregma on Thursday December 19, 2024 @07:28AM (#42460806)

Serendipity favours the prepared mind. That's all.

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Re:Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pi... by Cthulhu_ on Friday December 20, 2024 @03:18AM (#42469222)

Dying is still a valuable scientific outcome, but few people become famous for it except maybe Marie Curie.

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