When we make a mistake, often our i rst instinct is to say, “Oh no!” and to feel regret and maybe even
embarrassment at our failure. But mistakes and accidents are not always a bad thing. In fact, they
sometimes give rise to extraordinary ideas. In 1492, Christopher Columbus set out to discover a new
route to Asia. He did not reach Asia, but this failure resulted in his discovering the New World!
There are many stories of such happy accidents throughout modern history. For example, one of
the greatest medical discoveries of the 20th century was antibiotics, a kind of medication used to kill
bacteria that cause disease. Since the discovery, antibiotics may have saved millions of lives. Yet, the
discovery of the i rst antibiotic happened by accident.
In 1928, a Scottish scientist named Alexander Fleming was researching a kind of bacteria called staphylococcus. He
conducted experiments with the bacteria in dishes. Fleming was brilliant, but he was messy and absent-minded. When
he left his laboratory to go on vacation, instead of cleaning up, he left the bacteria in the dishes. When he returned, he
noticed that mold had grown in the dishes while he was gone. He could have just thrown the dishes away. Fortunately,
instead, he looked at them under a microscope. Fleming found that the area around the mold was free of bacteria. He
realized that the dangerous bacteria must have been dissolved by the mold. These dirty dishes led to the discovery of
penicillin, the i rst antibiotic. Today, this life-saving drug is used around the world. Each year there are over 80 million
prescriptions written for penicillin in the U.S. alone!
Not all lucky accidents have changed the way we live in dramatic ways. Some fortunate accidents have just made life a
little more convenient. But many of these conveniences have become such a part of our everyday lives that we’ve come
to take them for granted.
The discovery of Velcro® is one such fortunate accident. One summer day in 1948, a
Swiss inventor named George de Mestral went for a hike. When he returned, he was
covered in burrs—seed-sacs that cling to clothes. Nature designed burrs to do this
in order to spread seeds to new areas. De Mestral became curious about how these
burrs attached themselves to clothes and hair. He inspected one of the burrs from
his pants under a microscope. He saw that it had countless tiny hooks that clung to
the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants. This gave him
the idea to design a new kind of fastener. The fastener
would be made of two nylon strips, one side with stif
hooks like the burrs and the other side with loops like
the fabric of his pants. His invention, Velcro, has since
become ubiquitous. It can be found on everything
from shoes to wallets to blood pressure cuf s to
space shuttles.
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8 Reading
Before Reading
Can an accident or mistake ever end up leading to something good?
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Another modern invention we owe to a happy accident is Post-it™ Notes, those small
pieces of notepaper that can be stuck and unstuck again and again. In 1970, Spencer Silver
was working in a research laboratory, trying to create a strong adhesive. He created a new
adhesive that stuck to objects, but it could also easily be lifted of them. Because the adhesive
was so weak, Silver considered it a failure. He shouldn’t have. A few years later, a co-worker of
Silver’s was looking in a book. He used scraps of paper to keep his place in the book, but the scraps
kept falling out. Remembering Silver’s invention, the co-worker put some of the adhesive on the scraps.
It was perfect! The scraps stayed in place, but came of easily so they didn’t damage the book. Post-it
Notes were introduced in 1980, and quickly became an essential oi ce product around the world.
All of these stories show that accidents are not always a bad thing, and that not all mistakes should
automatically be discarded. Instead, perhaps we should take a closer look at our accidents and mistakes. They just may
reveal the solutions to a problem, or pave the way to an extraordinary new idea.