It is a common trope in comedy that if a clumsy person enters an antique shop, they are bound to knock over a precariously positioned and priceless Ming vase. For centuries, collectors in the West have sought out the rarest Chinese antiquities, of which Ming vases are just the most famous. As China has boomed economically recently, the prices of Chinese artworks have exploded.

This has led to many cases where people who were about to throw away an old pot or donate a cracked plate to a junk shop have suddenly discovered they are actually in possession of something worth a fortune. Here are ten cases where Chinese antiques turned out to be a windfall.

Related: 10 Amazing Antiques Roadshow Discoveries

10 £1 Million Collection in the Attic

Clearing out the attic can be one of the most annoying tasks for any homeowner. It’s dusty and full of spiders, and then you have to decide which of the things you have stored over the years is worth keeping and which should be put in the trash. Sometimes, though, you might just strike gold.

Edward Radcliffe became an antiques dealer just before WWII, and during his career, he built up a nice collection of Chinese antiques. Some of them were so exquisite that he lent them out to museums around the world. But for some reason, after he died, this collection was dumped in the attic and forgotten for over 50 years before his family decided to get it valued.

Among the stars of the collection was an enamel box made for the Xuande emperor of the Ming Dynasty in the 15th century. Finding one is phenomenally rare, as just four are known to exist in the world. The family must have been pleased when it was valued at 10,000 pounds at auction. They must have been beyond belief when the hammer went down, and it was sold for £288,000. With the rest of the collection selling as well, the whole lot made nearly 1 million pounds.^[1]

9 “Teapot”

The British love a cup of tea, so it is not unusual to find an elderly relative who has a teapot or two stored in their home. In 2020, a man finally sorted through the things his parents had stored in their attic. He found a plastic bag containing a tiny metal and enamel teapot, brought from China in the 1940s by his father. He thought of taking it to a charity shop. Instead, it was taken to an auctioneer who valued it at £100-150.

It soon became clear that it was actually something more special than a teapot. It turned out to be an imperial wine ewer made for the Qianlong emperor in the 18th century and one of only three in the world. On the day of the auction, nine bidders from around the world competed to own the minuscule masterpiece, and eventually, it sold for £380,000.

The owner, a construction worker, was thrilled with his sudden fortune. Asked what he would do with the money, he suggested he might buy a metal detector. With luck like his, who knows what treasures he might find.^[2]

8 Imperial Vase

Familiarity breeds contempt, so something we see every day tends to get overlooked. When an auctioneer visited a friend’s house one day, he noticed that an old vase they had just in their kitchen looked quite special. The tall vase had been bought for a few hundred pounds and was a pretty piece of porcelain – but to the owners, it was nothing too exciting.

It was only years later that the piece, made at the Imperial Court of the Qianlong emperor, was put up for sale, and collectors began to get excited. The rich blue vase is decorated with gold and silver and depicts cranes and bats flying against a cloudy sky. A vase of this age, with this decoration and in this size, caused a stir, and it was valued at around £100,000.

Bidding was fierce, and the vase was sold for £1.2 million. Not bad for an old thing shoved in the kitchen.^[3]

7 Loose Change Bowl

Pottery is a sturdy material but easily broken and damaged. For collectors of antiques, even the smallest chip can destroy the value of a piece, so most will do everything possible to protect their treasures. One family inherited a bowl owned by a well-known collector of Chinese antiques but did not give it the same care as he might have liked. They placed it in a guest room where friends would drop their keys and coins while they stayed.

It was only out of curiosity that they took the 9-inch (22.9-cm) wide turquoise glazed dish to an open day at an auctioneer’s event. It was immediately seen to have been produced for the early Ming Imperial Court. Known as a narcissus bowl, the object caused the valuers’ hands to shake, and the owners were happy to put it up for auction.

The bowl sold for £240,000. Hopefully, the new owner doesn’t toss metal objects into it.^[4]

6 Cracked Umbrella Stand

Sometimes, we are given things and don’t know what to do with them, but we hold onto them anyway for sentimental reasons. One couple in England had come into possession of a blue and white vase as a gift and thought no more of it for 50 years. They relegated it to a spare room, and since it was about the right size, they placed their umbrellas in it. Needless to say, this was not the right way to treat the vase.

The vase turned out to have been made for the court of the Qianlong emperor and had survived centuries mostly intact. Unfortunately, the years of being an umbrella stand had left their mark on the vase, with it being cracked and scarred on the inside. Despite the damage, it was still valued at around £500,000.

Buyers seemed able to overlook the hard life the vase had endured and ended up paying £765,000.^[5]

5 Umbrella Stand

There must be something about priceless Chinese vases that makes people look at them and think, “That would make an excellent umbrella stand.” When an expert from Christie’s auction house was made aware of a large, blue and white dragon vase that had once been an umbrella stand, he asked the French owners whether he could inspect it in person. As soon as he looked at it, he knew that the vase was a perfect example of 15th-century Ming Imperial pottery.

The umbrella stand phase of the vase’s life had miraculously left no trace on the flawless glaze. The large dragon motif was as fresh as the day it had been painted by the imperial artisans. When the vase was put up for auction in Hong Kong, excited bidding led to it reaching $20,447,642.^[6]

4 Yard Sale Bowl

Everyone likes a bargain, and there is nowhere you can pick up an excellent deal as easily as at a yard sale. People use yard sales to get rid of the various stuff they have accumulated over the years and generally just want it out of the house. For $35, you can grab a pretty bowl for your home—or one that might make you a fortune at auction.

When a buyer saw a small blue and white bowl at a yard sale, they liked it so much they didn’t bother to haggle over the $35 price tag. Almost straight away, they suspected they had bought something special and alerted an auction house. It was found that the bowl was Ming porcelain made in the early 15th century in a form called a lotus bowl—with only six examples in museums around the world.

The bowl sold for $721,800, a mere 29,000 times more than it was bought for.^[7]

3 Qianlong Vase

Thrift shops are great places to browse for unusual things because you never know what people have donated. You get to buy things cheap and also help a good cause. Sometimes, you really do find something special.

One shopper spotted a somewhat gaudy-looking vase with a yellow glaze and Chinese characters painted on it. It was only marked at £1 so they decided to buy it. Thinking it might be worth a little more than that, they put the vase on sale on eBay. However, as the price started to skyrocket, they removed it from the site and showed the vase to an auctioneer.

The vase was made at the court of the Qianlong emperor, and a mark on the base stated that it was not meant to be exported from the country. How it came to be in a charity shop in England is not known. At auction, the vase sold for £480,000. ^[8]

2 Brush Pot Donation

Thrift stores do not always let valuable antiques slip through their fingers. Volunteers who sort through donated objects are often given advice on spotting potentially important pieces and having them shown to experts. When one worker at St. Peter’s Hospice charity shop in Bristol, England, picked up a cracked old wooden pot that had been handed in and, for some reason, suspected it might be special—despite it not looking very promising.

The pot turned out to be a brush pot used in calligraphy and was made from bamboo around 1700, which perhaps explained why it was so cracked. Not only did the pot have a charmingly carved landscape scene on it, but it was also created by Gu Jue, one of the foremost bamboo workers at the time.

Luckily for the charity, this precious little object did not end up on their shelves and sell for a pittance. It went to auction and sold for £360,000, far outstripping the estimate of £15,000.^[9]

1 Shoebox Vase

If this list does nothing else, it should make you consider clearing out your attic. The ultimate case of a treasure lurking in the attic comes from France and involves one of the finest Chinese vases ever to be offered for sale.

Sotheby’s auctioneer might well have missed out on this discovery as the owner of the vase simply sent them an email saying she had found some Asian objects in her attic as she prepared to move but would not be able to send them any photographs. Some other details she provided suggested they might be worth looking at, so they invited her to bring them in. Riding on the metro, she carried the vase in a shoebox. The owners had relegated it to the attic after deciding it was “too pink” for their tastes.

The vase, with its animal motifs, was so lovely that even if it had been a copy of what it looked like, it still might have been worth €100,000. However, the experts recognized it as genuine. It really was a vase made for the Qianlong emperor’s birthday and given an auction estimate of €700,000. It blew past this when bidding started and finally sold for €16,182,800.^[10]

Have you ever wondered how somebody came up with an idea? For example, how did somebody ever think of making an X-ray machine or a microwave oven? By accident, that’s how!

Many of mankind’s most useful devices and contraptions were invented completely by mistake. For centuries, scientists have been tasked with finding the solution to a particular problem, only to discover something totally different. Here is a list of some of the most important and useful inventions that were discovered or invented by mistake.

10 Fireworks

Some 2,000 years ago in a Chinese kitchen, a cook made one of the oldest accidental discoveries known to man when he mixed sulfur, saltpeter (potassium nitrile), and charcoal over a fire. Let’s just say combustion ensued. What the cook was thinking, or whether or not he made it to work the next day, is not known, but the he’d just made a discovery that would change the history of the world forever. The ancient Chinese called it “fire chemical” and quickly learned that when they compressed the concoction, such as inside a piece of bamboo, it exploded. Thus, the firecracker was born.

Firecrackers became very common and were used during important events, such as weddings and funerals, all over the country. The Chinese believed that the retort, or bang, from the firecracker, kept evil spirits away from the ceremony. They would eventually learn through experimentation that they could produce thrust that would propel the bamboo container through the air, instead of exploding instantly, and soon, the solid-fuel rocket was invented. They put the two together, firecrackers and rockets, and fireworks were born.

Historians tell us that Marco Polo brought fireworks from China and introduced them to people in regions of the Middle East. From there, they made it to England, where interest in fireworks was strictly to weaponize them. Although the English are credited for devising the standard recipe for black powder still in use today, it was the Italians who turned the making of fireworks into an art form, with the use of multiple colors and choreographed firework displays. Needless to say, the Italians’ celebrations got louder and more colorful as they experimented with different chemical combinations that would produce different colors when burned. However, none of it would have been possible if not for the accidental discovery of “fire chemical” by a 2,000-year-old Chinese cook.^[1] (What the heck was he making, anyway?)

9 Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide)

In 1799, Humphry Davy, a young English inventor and chemist who would eventually be elected president of the Royal Society in London, decided to use himself as a Guinea pig to find out the effects of inhaling artificially produced gases, all in the name of science. Along with an assistant, Dr. Kinglake, they discovered that heat-treating ammonium nitrate crystals produced a gas that they could collect in special oil-treated silk bags. They then could run the gas through water vapors, which would purify it.

After attaching a makeshift mouthpiece, Humphry inhaled a bag of the gas and was euphorically amazed and more than pleasantly surprised with the results. He had discovered nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, and probably the very origin of the saying, “They were gassed!” Humphry reported that he felt “giddiness, flushed cheeks, intense pleasure, and sublime emotion connected with highly vivid ideas.” He soon started experimenting with the gas more and more until he was inhaling laughing gas away from the lab and after drinking alcohol when at home. Although he did keep detailed notes on his observations while breathing laughing gas, the amount he was consuming rose dramatically.

Davy would let his patients and colleagues try the gas, as long as they also recorded their experiences for science.^[2] Some of them were quite famous, such as the heir to the famous Wedgwood pottery company and well-known poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Humphry went so far as to construct an airtight box which subjects would get into and breathe pure nitrous oxide. In 1800, Davy wrote Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration, which are 80 very entertaining pages of his experiences while experimenting with laughing gas.

8 Saccharin

Other than lead acetate, which is a known toxin, saccharin is the first artificial sweetener to inexpensively replace cane sugar, and it was discovered completely by accident. Sometime in late 1878 or early 1879, Professor Ira Remsen was running a small laboratory at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, when he was approached by an import firm, H.W. Perot, to do some work regarding sugar. The firm wanted Constantin Fahlberg, an expert on the sweet stuff, to use Remsen’s lab to test the purity of a shipment of it.

After successfully completing the tests, Fahlberg stayed on working for the professor on various projects. One day, while eating his dinner, Fahlberg discovered that his roll tasted unusually sweet and decided to find out why. After deducing that the bread hadn’t been sweetened by the baker, the proverbial light bulb lit up, and he assumed that he must have gotten a chemical on his hands while working at the lab, and that substance had been transferred to his roll, making it taste sweet. Since he felt no adverse reactions to this unknown chemical, he decided to find out what it was.

Fahlberg couldn’t remember exactly what substance he’d brought home on his hands, so he simply taste-tested every chemical he had at his workstation the day before, and voila—he found it! He discovered that he had filled a beaker with phosphorus chloride, ammonia, and sulfobenzoic acid, which, in turn, created benzoic sulfimide, which was a compound he knew of but never had any reason to eat. He had discovered saccharin, which really became popular during the sugar shortages of World War I.

Contrary to popular belief, saccharin is perfectly safe to consume, and there are studies on record to prove it. In fact, as recently as 2010, the EPA publicly stated that “saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health.”^[3]

7 X-Rays

On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, a German physicist, was working in his lab running tests on cathode rays when, out of his peripheral vision, he spotted a strange glow on a screen that had earlier been treated with chemicals. Wilhelm had been the first person in history to observe X-rays, which is what he dubbed them due to their unknown and mysterious properties.

X-rays are waves of electromagnetic energy that are similar to light, except that they run in wavelengths around 1,000 times shorter, allowing them to pass through soft substances such as skin and muscle but not harder ones such as bone or metal. They would revolutionize the field of diagnostic medicine by affording physicians a non-intrusive means to see inside the human body without surgery. It wasn’t long before this important diagnostic tool made headlines around the globe when it was used on the battlefield during the Balkan War to locate bullets and diagnose broken limbs.

Although the scientists of the day took no time at all in finding the benefits of X-rays, it took much longer for them to discover the harmful qualities of these magical rays. It was believed that X-rays passed through the human body harmlessly just as light does, but after several years, reports of strange skin damage and burns started piling up. In 1904 Clarence Dally, a scientist working with X-rays for Thomas Edison, died of skin cancer from overexposure to X-rays. This caused some scientists working in the field to start being more careful, but it still took quite some time before the harmful effects of radiation would really sink in.

For example, starting in the 1930s, shoe stores in the United States used fluoroscopes to draw people in. These machines would amaze customers by letting them actually see the bones in their feet, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the danger of this novelty item was realized, and they were banned from use completely. Today, X-rays are still widely used in the fields of medicine, security, and material analysis.^[4]

6 Silly Putty

With no moving parts or electronics to fail, Silly Putty remains one of the most prolific toys ever produced. In its first five years, over 32 million units were bought worldwide. Today, it is guesstimated that almost a third of a billion have been sold around the globe! This was obviously a good thing for its inventor; General Electric (GE) engineer Dr. James Wright, who discovered the gooey stuff in 1943.

During the height of World War II, the good doctor had been tasked by his employers to concoct a synthetic form of rubber. But instead of delivering misery in the form of war machines rolling on synthetic rubber tires, he brought joy and happiness in the form of a cheap and simple way to entertain millions of all ages. While trying different chemical combinations to produce synthetic rubber, Dr. Wright mixed silicone oil and boric acid together, and he managed to invent a sticky mass of goop that would eventually be dubbed “Silly Putty.” (Note that Earl Warrick has also been credited with Silly Putty’s invention.)

The stuff did have a few properties that were rather unusual. For instance, it would keep its ability to bounce even better than rubber throughout a wide range of temperatures, yet when hit with a hammer, it shattered. Scientists at GE experimented with the stuff but couldn’t find any practical use for it. Not wanting to give up on the material, they sent samples to engineers around the globe in the hopes that someone might find a viable use for it.

There are multiple versions of what happened next, but the following is considered to be the most credible: Fittingly, all it took was a party to get Silly Putty going. It was a good thing for advertising agent Paul Hodgson, too. He was trying to get a toy catalog together and attended a party where he watched adults having a blast with a ball of some kind of putty. They were having so much fun sticking it to things and stretching it around the room that he decided to include the stuff in his catalog as “Nutty Putty.” Hodgson was surprised when it outsold everything in the catalog, so he decided to buy more. After finding out where it came from, he bought some from GE, filled a bunch of plastic eggs with an ounce of the stuff, renamed it “Silly Putty,” and sold over 250,000 of them in three days, at $1 each!

Over the years, fans have found many uses for Silly Putty, including squeezing it for exercise, fixing a wobbly table leg, picking lint off things, and lifting pictures off comic books and newspapers. Silly Putty made it to space in 1968 with the astronauts of Apollo 8, who used it to hold their tools in place during the mission.^[5]

5 Microwave Ovens

You push “2” on the keypad. A box lights up, and you see a plate rotating with a small, brown packet on it. Soon, a machine-gun rattle fills your kitchen air with the familiar, tantalizing odor of your favorite buttery snack. You have in front of you not only steaming hot and buttery popcorn but one of most prolific machines ever invented in history, and it was discovered by accident! It is the microwave.

Today, there is one of these miraculous contraptions in over 90 percent of American households, providing hundreds of millions with any food from A to Z, and everything in between, in seconds. In 1946, an engineer working for Raytheon named Percy Spencer was working with a magnetron, the main component of a radar system, when he found that a candy bar he was carrying in his shirt pocket had melted into a gooey mess while he was in close proximity to the device. His interest piqued, he placed an egg in the path of the magnetron’s rays and got a face full of egg for his trouble. He then got the idea to put some corn kernels on a plate, and he got them to pop all over the lab!

The rest, as they say, was history. Percy Spencer is also credited with the invention of the proximity fuse, which allows bombs to explode above their targets for a much better effect.^[6]

4 Scotchgard

Fluorochemical technology, which involves products made from chemical compounds containing fluorine, is 3M’s bread and butter, so to speak. They have been global leaders in the industry for well over half a century, yet there was a time when their scientists were greatly challenged by the task of creating useful products using this technology. A young chemist named Patsy Sherman accepted that challenge when she was hired by 3M in 1952 and soon agreed to meet it in 1953. Sherman was then given the assignment to come up with a rubber-like material that would resist jet fuel and, as so often happens, discovered something totally different instead.

It started with an accident when one of her assistants spilled some of a compound they’d been experimenting with on her new sneakers. She was really irritated by the fact that she couldn’t get the stuff off of them no matter what kind of solvent she tried. This intrigued Sherman, who was excited by the tenacity of the experimental product, so she joined forces with Sam Smith, another 3M chemist, in an effort to develop a badly needed and inexpensive fluorochemical waterproofing agent for clothing, something unimaginable at the time.

After a few years spent refining their compound, the team of Sherman and Smith unveiled their brand-new product to the world, and in 1956, the brand name “Scotchgard” was born. 3M had stumbled onto their first big seller. When asked about the company’s good fortune for constantly coming up with innovative and successful products in this manner, Richard Carlton, a 3M executive, astutely replied, “You can’t stumble if you’re not in motion.”^[7]

3 Pacemakers

It was 1956. Wilson Greatbatch was working on a device to monitor and record the sounds of the human heart when he inserted a transistor into his device that was 100 times as powerful as he would normally use. His mistake caused the instrument to create electrical impulses that were perfectly emulating the beat of the heart. So, instead of ruining the thing, which could easily have happened, the device wasn’t monitoring the heartbeat; it was creating one! He was amazed when he quickly realized that his invention could be used as an internal pacemaker, an instrument which, at the time, had to be worn like a necklace, with the thing shocking the patient to keep their heart beating.

The very first pacemakers looked like a television that the patient was tethered to, and since battery power was insufficient at the time, they had to be plugged in as well. A patient who needed a pacemaker then was much like a person on dialysis; they couldn’t leave the machine, and they couldn’t carry it around. An internal pacemaker would allow millions of these people to live completely normal lives. So, a bit bigger than a hockey puck, Greatbatch’s first prototype was implanted into a dog in 1958 and controlled its heartbeat successfully and without difficulty. The first human patient to receive one was a 77-year-old man who lived 18 months, while a young recipient lived 30 years with his.

They did have their problems, though. Body fluids would permeate the device, ruining the circuitry, and batteries would last only about two years, so Greatbatch started looking for better ways to power them. In 1970, he started his own company, Greatbatch Inc., and developed lithium batteries that lasted ten years and would eventually be used in over 90 percent of pacemakers on the planet. The brilliant inventor ended up with 350 patents in his name and was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 1986. Today, over three million people benefit from Greatbatch’s inventions, and 600,000 of his pacemakers are implanted every year. Wilson Greatbatch passed away in 2011.^[8]

2 Post-It Notes

In 1968, a scientist working for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation (also known as 3M) named Spencer Silver was given the job of inventing a super adhesive designed exclusively to be used in the aerospace industry, a very tough industry to design for. His initial attempt was a flop. He was looking for strength but got something strong enough to maybe hold a sheet of paper to a bulletin board, giving them the idea to fashion some notepad prototypes, even though they didn’t have much faith in the concept. Art Fry, another employee of 3M, had the idea to use one of these prototypes as bookmarks in his choir hymn book because he kept losing his place while singing. With this practical use, he realized that the prototype notes worked perfectly by sticking really well while leaving no glue and not damaging the pages.

Silver, Fry, and several others who worked on perfecting the notes had mistakenly invented an entire brand-new hit product line. It was tough going at first, but after four failed marketing attempts in as many big cities, 3M managed to get free samples into the hands of people in Boise, Idaho, where “Post-its” finally took off. It had been 12 years, but it was worth the struggle in the end.^[9]

An interesting story about Post-it notes surrounds the familiar yellow color they chose to initially market them in. The official story is that the yellow “made a good emotional connection with users” and that it also “contrasts well when stuck on white paper.” But according to an insider, the lab next door to the Post-it team’s had a surplus of scrap yellow paper, and that’s how the color was decided. In fact, after their neighbors ran out of it, they went out and bought more. Spencer Silver, who started his education in a one-room schoolhouse, is the owner of 22 patents, including the patent for a “low-tack, reusable, pressure sensitive adhesive” or, more commonly, “stickless glue.”

1 Self-Igniting Matches

Humans have had fire for eons, and we’ve always looked for easy ways to start fires. The modern-day match transformed our world and enriched our way of life in ways their inventors could never have imagined, but early matches weren’t strikable or self-igniting and needed some other means to light. For example, early Chinese matches were coated with sulfur that burned very bright and were used to enlarge an existing fire quickly, but they never evolved beyond that ability.

A Parisian named Jean Chancel opened the door to self-igniting matches in 1805 when he mixed sugar, rubber, potassium chlorate, and sulfur together and coated wooden sticks with the concoction. He then would dip the sticks into a sulfuric acid solution to get them to light. The problem with this invention was the toxic and volatile clouds of chlorine dioxide gas they produced. These clouds were explosive, making them rather dangerous.

The real breakthrough came in 1826, when an English chemist named John Walker invented the first “friction match”—you guessed it—by accident. While working in his lab, Walker noticed that a glob of chemicals he’d been working with earlier had dried and formed a lump on the end of his stir stick. Not wanting to mix the chemicals into his present experiment, he started scraping the stuff off the implement and was both startled and pleased when it burst into flame! Walker used a sulfur-based compound on the matches’ heads and rough paper coated with phosphorus to strike them with. The user would fold the paper over the match and pull it through while applying a bit of pressure to light it. He sold quite a few of these fire sticks, but they had a problem: The sulfur burned so violently that it would burn through the stick, and the flaming head would come off, many times with undesirable results.^[10]

Matches these days are made from a red phosphorus concoction, first employed by Johan Edvard Lundstrom, which is completely nontoxic. Safety matches, which are familiar to most today, were first produced and sold in the United States by the Diamond Match Company, which gave up their rights to patent them so that any company could produce and market safety matches.

I live in Northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States of America, in “one of the Original 13” I like to say, where I grew up with a fascination for collectibles like baseball cards, coins, stamps, and old bottles, just to name a few. Always a self-starter, I’ve taught myself many different things and have ended up with a large variety of skills and hobbies in both the old and new and have recently started putting them to use on the Internet. I have been writing in several capacities for decades.

Have you ever wondered how your favorite foods were invented?

Most of us probably envision a chef or a food company employee experimenting endlessly to craft the perfect concoction for palates that are tired of the same old thing. A pinch of this, a dash of that, and voila! Finally, after days or even months of hard work, a new food is created.

As it turns out, pure dumb luck is often the greatest inventor of all. Here are 10 favorite foods that came about by complete accident.

10 Popsicles

In 1905, Frank Epperson invented the Popsicle. This delicious fruity treat is something that almost everyone has tasted. When it is hot in the summer, it is good to have your fridge stuffed with these treats.

Frank was only 11 years old when he invented these ice pops. This child had received some soda-making equipment and was excited to start producing soda. Accidentally, he left the sugary mixture out overnight.

The night was bitterly cold. By the next morning, the stick he had used to stir the soda had frozen into the mixture.

The young inventor proceeded to lick the soda blend off the stick. He called it the “Epsicle,” naming it after himself. Then he started to sell his concoction to neighbors and friends in his area. They all enjoyed the sweet treat. In 1924, he patented his invention and renamed it as “Popsicle.”^[1]

9 Chocolate Chip Cookies

In 1930, Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie. You may be wondering how such a delicious treat could have been created by complete mistake. But, of course, it was. Surprisingly enough, she and her loving husband owned a tourist lodge called the Toll House Inn.

One day at the inn, she was making chocolate cookies for her many guests and discovered that she had run out of baker’s chocolate, one of the key ingredients. Instead of running to the store to grab more baker’s chocolate, she chopped up some Nestle chocolate and put it into the cookie batter.

She assumed that the Nestle chocolate would spread out to create a whole chocolate cookie when it was baked in the oven. Instead, she invented the chocolate chip cookie.^[2] This one little mistake created greatness in America’s food history.

8 Ice Cream Cones

In 1904, Arnold Fornachou created ice cream cones—with some help from a fellow vendor. Business was booming on that hot summer day, and eventually, Arnold ran out of plastic cups in which to serve his mouthwatering ice cream. Luckily, a pastry chef was selling pastries nearby and came to Arnold’s rescue.^[3]

The pastry chef had some waffles left over. He showed Arnold how to roll them up to form a cone-like shape that would easily hold a good amount of ice cream. This was a delicious way to serve ice cream, and Arnold’s customers loved it.

Today, ice cream is served in wafer cones, waffle cones, kiddie cones, and even waffle cone bowls. We can all thank Arnold Fornachou and the pastry chef for this great invention.

7 The Sandwich

In the 1700s, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, discovered that two slices of bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, and mustard inside tasted delicious. His story, you ask? There are many versions that suggest why and how the sandwich was made.

One popular tale is that John Montagu gambled a lot. It took up so much of his time that he could not possibly leave an intense card game. So he often requested that meat be brought to him between two thin slices of bread. That way, he could eat a meal without using a fork or getting his hands dirty by directly touching the meat.^[4]

Another version of the story is that Montagu sat at his desk for hours, trying to create a utensil-free meal that could fill up his stomach and still be easy to eat. Eventually, he came up with the sandwich.

As time went on, people thought of the different types of sandwiches that we eat today. People now fill sandwiches with meat, veggies, sauces, and even different types of sweets.

6 Tofu

Many stories have suggested why and how tofu was invented, but here is one of the most original. According to legend, an ancient Chinese cook accidentally dropped a piece of nigari into a pot of soybean milk. A curdling effect was created, which made tofu.

The chef served the new, unidentified substance to his customers, and surprisingly, they loved the new food. The cook continued to serve the dish, making many customers very happy.

To this day, people eat tofu as a replacement for meat or just as a healthy vegetarian option. The great thing about it is that it tastes like whatever it is cooked in. Tofu is featured in many Asian dishes.^[5]

5 Potato Chips

In 1853, George Crum worked at Moon’s Lake House near Saratoga Springs. He was a chef and wanted to fulfill his customers’ orders without any flaws. One day, a loyal customer ordered a batch of fried potatoes but did not enjoy their thickness. So he sent them back to the kitchen to be remade—but thinner.

His request was taken seriously, and the cook fulfilled his second order. Unfortunately, the second batch was not to the customer’s standards. This happened one or two times, each batch not being thin enough for the customer’s liking.

Tired of the complaints, George took a potato and sliced it as thin as he possibly could, knowing that this had to be the order that the customer would like to eat. George fried and salted the potato slices, trying his hardest to make them as delicious as possible.

He brought them out to the customer and hoped that this batch would be satisfactory. The customer loved them, and this new food was named the potato chip.^[6]

4 Corn Flakes

In the 19th century, William and John Kellogg invented corn flakes. These two brothers worked at Battle Creek Sanitarium, where vegetarianism and knowing how to be healthy were very important.

One day, the Kelloggs were looking for a substitute for bread. First, they boiled wheat. Unfortunately (but fortunately for us), they boiled the wheat too long. When they rolled it out, it fell into many flakes. Lastly, they baked it—and poof! Out came the bread flakes!

Many people thought that this was delicious, but the Kelloggs knew that they could make it better. The brothers substituted corn for wheat, and corn flakes were born.^[7]

3 Slurpees

In the late 1950s, Omar Knedlik invented the treat we all know and love—Slurpees. You may have had this delicious drink as a refreshment at the movie theater or as a yummy dessert. But did you know the story behind the invention of the Slurpee?

Knedlik owned a Dairy Queen franchise. Compared to today, the shop’s machines were not quite as reliable. One day, the soda fountain wasn’t working so Knedlik stuck bottles of soda in the freezer. He kept them in a bit long, and the liquid became slushy and solid. He served the concoction to his customers, and surprisingly, they loved it.^[8]

Knedlik continued to receive requests for this slushy soda, and he proceeded to call it a Slurpee!

2 Dippin’ Dots

In 1988, microbiologist Curt Jones invented our favorite sweet snack, Dippin’ Dots. Jones was trying to figure out how to feed cows faster and easier while using fewer materials. He froze a batch of cow feed at around -212 degrees Celsius (-350 °F), and the resulting pellets could easily be fed to the waiting cows.

Jones discovered that this same method could be used with human food. He tested it with ice cream and created Dippin’ Dots, the fun summer treat that we all love.^[9]

1 Coca-Cola

In 1886, John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola. He was a wounded veteran who was addicted to morphine. Pemberton wanted to create a replacement for the morphine to alleviate his addiction. He experimented many times until he devised a formula with small amounts of cocaine and kola nut.

To this day, Coca-Cola is a well-known soda brand that is sold throughout the US.^[10] You can get this drink at the movie theater, at a festival, at the store to take home with you, or anywhere else you can possibly think of!

I am a young adult, and I love to write about anything and everything! I enjoy making lists as well, so this combines my two hobbies into one!