Accidental Discoveries Worth Millions

The most fascinating unplanned discovery I've made in my life was finding a $10 bill in an old winter jacket. Some people are luckier, uncovering ancient underground cities or inventing something that makes them millionaires. Velcro was created after a routine stroll in the woods. Kellogg's Corn Flakes were inspired by a chipped tooth. And Plato saved a business empire from collapse by chance.

Back in 1998, electrical engineer John Williams found something resembling an electrical plug poking out of the ground. He started digging and noticed it was stuck in a small rock. He came across it in a rural area in North America, far from any sign of civilization or industry. This piece of electronics embedded in granite got nicknamed the "enigmalith" and was valued at $500,000. Some scientists are convinced it's a big hoax, not a memento left by space visitors as Williams claims. But the finder wanted to prove it was genuine ancient technology, some kind of electrical connector. If it's not a hoax, then this little discovery could indicate that past humans or civilizations were far more advanced than we ever imagined, having found a way to transmit electricity long before the 19th century. Williams offered for scientists to examine the find and determine what it really is, without breaking open the rock. But there were no takers. An engineer and geologist Williams consulted both confirmed there were no traces of glue or welding on the electronic component. So it must be as old as the rock itself, which is around 100,000 years old according to geological analysis.

Dr. John Kellogg had a philosophy of healthy living with exercise, water, no bad habits or meat. In the late 19th century he ran a health institute in Michigan. Once he whipped up a mix of flour, oats and cornmeal, thinking that baking whole grains at high temperatures would make them easier to digest and more nutritious. He baked the mixture twice, first making cookies, but a patient chipped their tooth on that version. So he decided to break it into small pieces. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how Kellogg's Corn Flakes originated, with so many versions of the story. Kellogg's wife Ella and his brother Will both claimed they contributed to inventing the flakes. Along with other family and staff, the company legend says it happened one night in 1898 when some wheat cereal dough was left out too long, fermenting in the process. When rolled out thin, the slightly moldy dough turned into large, crisp, tasty flakes after baking. Over the next few years, Will Kellogg kept tweaking the recipe and found that corn, not wheat, made even crunchier, tastier flakes. His Kellogg's brand and Corn Flakes grew into a multi-billion dollar company.

Swiss engineer George de Mestral once went for a walk with his dog and came back with an idea that would later go into space. When they returned from the woods, de Mestral noticed his pants and the dog's fur were covered in burs from burdock plants. He examined the burs under a microscope and saw they were shaped like tiny hooks that stuck to the loops in fabric and fur. He decided to recreate that natural technology to design an extra strong fastener with many practical uses. He spent years testing different materials for his invention before settling on nylon. He also needed to design a special loom that could weave the fibers in the right size, shape and density. It took de Mestral 14 years until he introduced Velcro, from “velvet” and “hook” in French. He had hoped it would replace zippers on clothes, but fashion designers found Velcro cheap-looking and unattractive. NASA didn’t agree, and used Velcro for astronaut spacesuits and helmets in the 1960s. Now Velcro is ubiquitous, from footwear to toys to airline seats.

Before the mid-20th century, most homes were heated with coal, leaving soot throughout the house that was especially visible on wallpaper. Coutal Products was the largest seller of wallpaper cleaner, but in the 1950s more people switched to gas, oil and electricity, solving the soot buildup issue. The owner of Coutal was trying to save his failing business. Meanwhile, his sister-in-law discovered wallpaper cleaner could be used to make holiday decorations. As a nursery school teacher, she found modeling clay too difficult for her students to handle. She suggested using this material for molding shapes, and it worked well. She told her relatives about the discovery and proposed the name Play-Doh. The Coutal company was about to go bankrupt, so this was a great new business option. Soon Macy’s and Marshall Field’s started selling the new toy. Play-Doh was originally just white, but soon expanded to red, blue and yellow. They also tweaked the original recipe, but it’s still mostly the same mixture once used as wallpaper cleaner. An urban legend says that if you put all the Play-Doh ever made through their Fun Factory playset, you'd get a snake that could wrap around Earth 300 times.

A man in Turkey was renovating his home when he knocked down a basement wall with a sledgehammer and found a tunnel behind it. The tunnel led to more passages, then halls and chambers. It turned out to be a whole 18-story underground complex, abandoned long ago. This was the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu, built thousands of years ago as a home for up to 20,000 people. Whoever built it had great skill, as it’s quite easy to dig tunnels in the soft rock there, but caverns are a major risk. None of Derinkuyu's floors have ever collapsed. The city had a complex ventilation system with over 15,000 shafts. The upper levels had the best ventilation and were used for living quarters and sleeping. The lower levels were mainly for storage, but also had a dungeon. In between there were rooms for domestic animals, a school, convent, and small churches.

John Martin, a forestry professor, was exploring a Wisconsin forest one night using a UV flashlight to spot glowing fungi, plants, and frogs up in the canopy. Suddenly he heard a flying squirrel chirping at a bird feeder. He pointed his flashlight at it and saw it light up pink. The professor told his colleagues, and they decided to investigate further. They checked flying squirrel specimens in museums and found almost all had the same pink fluorescence. Non-flying squirrels didn’t glow at all. Other fluorescent animals like puffins and chameleons glow blue under UV. The only other mammals with fluorescent fur are around 20 species of opossum. They live in different ecosystems and have varied diets. The only thing they share with flying squirrels is being nocturnal. There’s enough UV light in low-light conditions, and nocturnal animals need UV vision. The pink glow may relate to nighttime navigation and perception, especially in cold and snow. Or it could help male flying squirrels attract mates. A sort of mimicry.