History Happened by Accident: 15 Mistakes, Discoveries and Disasters That Changed What Came Next

Some discoveries began as failed experiments. Some disasters began with tiny assumptions. And some of history's most consequential moments happened because something went unexpectedly wrong.In 1856, an eighteen-year-old chemist trying to synthesise quinine produced a purple residue instead. In 1938, a cylinder that should have contained gas mysteriously refused to release any. Decades later, a spacecraft reached Mars only to disappear because two pieces of software understood the same numbers differently.History Happened by Accident tells fifteen true stories of mistakes, discoveries and disasters whose consequences reached far beyond the moment that caused them.Follow the unexpected paths behind Teflon, radioactivity, the cosmic microwave background, cisplatin, saccharin, Prussian blue, sildenafil and warfarin. Then enter the darker side of unintended consequences through the Mars Climate Orbiter, Hubble's flawed mirror, Ariane 5, Therac-25, the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse and the sinking of the Vasa.These are not simple stories about lucky mistakes.Most mistakes lead nowhere. Some cause enormous harm. What makes these fifteen remarkable is what happened afterward: somebody noticed an unexpected result, questioned an assumption, investigated a failure or learned what a system had revealed when it went wrong.Carefully researched and written for the curious general reader, History Happened by Accident explores the moments when plans failed, evidence refused to cooperate and history took a direction nobody intended.The accident is only the beginning.