I read an article earlier about medications that were discovered by chance or even by accident. For example, the discovery of penicillin was basically a fluke and could easily have gone unnoticed. It can cure or prevent diseases that were 100% fatal as recently as the 1930s, but what if it hadn’t been discovered? Or if it had been discovered centuries earlier and prevented plagues and countless deaths?
It makes me wonder how many things may have gone undiscovered to this day that might be the key to curing cancer or CF or HIV?
While not quite as important as life saving miracle drugs, it’s amazing to think that some of the most gifted, talented musicians or singers were also discovered by sheer chance. Kelly Clarkson, who has sold over 20 million albums and 83 Billboard #1 hits, didn’t even realize that she could sing until 7th grade. The choir director at her middle school overheard her singing to herself as she walked down the hall and insisted that she audition for the choir. To that point, Clarkson thought she sounded like everyone else singing in the shower or alone in the car, but no clue that she had a gift!
Conversely, other singers who are amazingly talented were ignored despite their attempts to be ‘discovered’. A favorite of mine, Martina McBride, (also known as “The Voice” and “The Celine Dion of Country Music”) is one of the most successful country singers in the business. She has sold over 16 million albums and has been named ACM Female Vocalist of The Year more times than any other female artist other than Reba McEntire, with whom she is tied. But she tried for several years to get noticed in Nashville, to no avail. It was only after learning that scouts for RCA have artists mail their demos in a certain color envelope and marked “Requested Material” did she get their attention. They signed her to a contract immediately after hearing her demo…and they were embarrassed to learn that it only happened because she was resourceful enough to trick them into listening to it!
I consider myself agnostic (not foolish enough to say for certain that no God exists, but also lacking any belief that a Higher Power or God exists), it makes me wonder what else have we missed? Or what chain of events has been set in motion that will eventually have a profound impact?
Just speaking for myself, I’m amazed when I think of all the “accidents” that have happened to me over the years, that had a lasting effect on the direction of my life. Just one example: If I hadn’t been in Bloomingdale’s shopping for a pair of suspenders at a particular time, I wouldn’t have met a former coworker who set my career in an entirely different direction. Things like that have happened many times in my life, and those are only the accidents I knew about. How many missed accidents have there been, I have no way of knowing.
A few years ago, I was approaching an intersection and the light and arrow for the left turn lane were Yellow. Any other time, I would have gunned it and made a ‘hard’ left turn (I have a Mazda3 and they’re not kidding about the ‘Zoom,Zoom’) but I had my nephew (then 8 years old) in the back seat on the passenger side of the car in his booster seat. A utility truck ran Yellow (actually it was Red by the time they went under it) at 45+mph! It would have t-boned my relatively small car on the passenger side if I had tried to make the turn…and probably would have killed both of us…
One of my favorite movies is a rather obscure 1998 British flick starring Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah called “Sliding Doors”. A few minutes into the movie, it shows her missing a subway train and an alternate universe where she didn’t miss the train. It shows how profoundly different her life turns out based on that one minute difference…but it’s true.
When I was 17 1/2, just graduated from HS and looking for a summer job, I happened to be looking at newspaper ads and answered one that was not for a summer job. It was for a lab technician who could also be a part-time student, taking about 24 credits a year and graduate in five years. It changed my life completely. The full story is too long for here, but I am trying to write it up.
I think it was nylon that was discovered as a result of a failed experiment in a DuPont lab. The story of Firestone and vulcanized rubber is well known. Post-It notes were the result of a failure to make a good adhesive and the intelligence of a 3M scientist to realize that there were uses for a poor adhesive.
I worked for Dupont Flooring for several years and quite a few of Dupont’s most famous technologies were discovered by accident or were the product of failed attempts to create something entirely different. The precursor to Kevlar was created in an attempt to create a fiber with very different properties. But somehow, someone figured out that their failed creation could repel bullets instead…very handy!
I forgot about the Post-It Notes story and 3M Corp until you mentioned it.
Laminated safety glass was another chance discovery. A scientist dropped a glass beaker and it didn’t shatter or explode as it normally would. He noticed that the inside was coated with a plastic cellulose nitrate, which held the broken glass together. The auto industry refused to use it citing cost as the reason. It took another 20 years of people being shredded by shattering windshields before they finally started using it.
I’m waiting for the day when they finally realize just how toxic all that crap is and the diseases that it has caused over the last 20-30 years!
Of course, someone after that will discover that Stevia (the only ‘totally natural’ sweetener, made from the leaves of the stevia plant) is toxic, too…and I’ll still be screwed…but for now, it’s the only one I touch!
It took a smart chemist who didn’t assume a gas tank had just leaked but weighed it instead and found out something else had happened. And this substance probably played a big role in the mother of all history changing projects, the Manhatten project. And knowing the properties of this stuff, if they didn’t have it, things would have been even more of a pain than they were.
Now, the stuff would have probably been discovered eventually. But accidently only a few years before it came in real handy at perhaps one of the most critical times in history is hard to beat. Whether it made the difference or not is hard to say. But given the timing of the end of WW2 even a few months delay might have made the difference between an A bomb being used in war or not or even being tested or built till years later or not.
How different would history be if Japan had surrended with a couple A bombings?
I must agree, The Manhattan Project is at the top of the list, it had a bit of impact on history, ending WWII, blowing most of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and tens of thousands of Japanese civilians in each) off the map…that last one is still pretty controversial…and we hope they will always remain the ONLY two uses of atomic or nucler bombs for all time…a third time would really suck, unless it just happened to occur over Iran…
They kinda started it, with that little Pearl Harbor scuffle…but I still have a moral issue with the Japanese civilians who were killed, scarred for life or watched their friends and loved ones die…
Don’t get started with that whole “A bombing Japan, moral or amoral?” stuff. That’s not what this thread is about.
The point being history could have very well unfolded very very differently. And not neccesarily better. Imagine if we had not quite finished the bombs in time. But we have awhile to build a couple hundred over the next few years. But we never actually saw the devestation they caused in a real sense. Then Korea comes up. And the Russians have a few. And before you know it hundreds of these things are used in that conflict. Or some other early conflict. Very different history from then on.
I don’t want to debate this more and derail the thread. The point has been made.
It’s my damn thread, I can stray off topic if I want! But I’ll be nice and shut up…for now..what’s done is done…and the world could be a much worse place (or possibly a better place, doubful) the war wasn’t ended as swiftly and completely as it was! =)
The discovery of the silver mine at Laurium in the 5th century BC. The Athenian leader Themosticles successfully convinced the people that instead of dividing up all the new silver, they should use it to finance an arms build-up. He pointed out that they had defeated a Persian expedition seven years earlier but sooner or later, the Persians would send a larger army seeking revenge. And he was right - the Persians invaded three years later.
If that silver mine hadn’t been discovered, a weaker Greece probably would have fallen to Persia. So no Athens, no Sparta, no Thebes, no Corinth, no Alexander, no classical Greece, no Western civilization. We’d live in a very different world.
