In the 1930s, Ruth Wakefield, the owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, was attempting to make chocolate cookies. She thought that the chopped-up chocolate would melt into the dough, but it didn't. Instead, it created the first chocolate chip cookies.
In the 1850s, a chef named George Crum was trying to please a difficult customer at Moon's Lake House in New York. After repeatedly sending back fried potatoes for being too thick, Crum sliced them incredibly thin and fried them to a crisp, creating the first potato chips.
In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mixture of powdered soda and water with a stirring stick on his porch overnight during a cold San Francisco night. The mixture froze, and he discovered the first popsicle.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg accidentally left a pot of cooked wheat sitting out, and it became stale. When they tried to roll it out, they created flakes, which they then toasted to create the first corn flakes.
In the early 19th century, chemists John Lea and William Perrins were trying to recreate a sauce a client had brought back from India. They abandoned their failed attempts but rediscovered the sauce years later. It had fermented and aged, resulting in Worcestershire sauce.
According to legend, tofu was discovered over 2,000 years ago in China when a chef accidentally curdled soy milk with nigari seaweed. The solid curds that formed became the basis for tofu.
In the 17th century, wine was bottled before the fermentation process was complete. This caused a second fermentation to occur in the bottle, creating carbonation and the famous sparkling wine we know as Champagne.
Cheese is believed to have been discovered when milk was stored in the stomach of an animal. The natural enzymes in the stomach lining curdled the milk, resulting in the first cheese.