A Lot Of Your Favorite Foods Were Invented By Accident

Some of the best things come by accident, like love, music collaborations, and even children. None of those accidents are as tasty as these foods, though, because you’d be surprised how many things you put in your mouth came from unplanned origins.

From Dippin Dots to Pink Lemonade, check out how they all serendipitously got started:

Icee

In the 1950s, a Kansas City Dairy Queen soda fountain went out, and owner Omar Knedlik was forced to put his product in bottles and stuck them in the freezer. When he took them out, they were all slushed. He sold them that way and people became big fans. From there, Knedlik McGuyver’ed himself a slushy machine using the AC unit rom a car, some flavoring, water, and carbon dioxide.

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Dippin’ Dots

Dippin’ Dots were invented in 1988 by microbiologist Curt Jones, who was originally trying to figure out a way to feed cows more efficiently.One of Jones’s experiments involved freezing cow feed at 350 degrees below zero, turning the cow food into little pellets. Taking that same concept, Jones froze ice cream with liquid nitrogen, which turned them into the little Dippin’ Dot beads we’ve become familiar with.

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Beer

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact origins of beer, but it is believed that hunter-gatherer tribes stumbled upon its fermentation process about 12,000 years ago. In the midst of wheat, rice barley, and maize crops, it was bound to happen.

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Waffle Cone

In 1904, Ernest A. Hamwi was selling fresh waffle crisp pastries at the St. Louis World’s Fair. When an ice cream vendor next to him ran out of plates, Hamwi was a homie and rolled up his waffles in a cone shape. Once the waffle crisps cooled, they put the ice cream inside, and it actually worked.

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Pink Lemonade

There are two accounts of how pink lemonade was invented, and both are accidental and strange. The first dates back to 1857, at a circus. A lemonade vendor ran out of water for his sweet drink. To remedy the thrifty vendor went backstage and took the pink water from the circus’ bareback rider’s freshly washed rights. The disgusting jerk then used that washed water, his lemons, and tantric acid to make his “fine strawberry lemonade.”

The second account isn’t so extra, but still involves a circus. Circus promoter Henry E. Allott was believe to have accidentally dropped red cinnamon candy into a batch of his lemonade. He rolled with the pink colored lemonade and kept selling.
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Corn Flakes

According to Kellogg’s, company founder W.K. Kellogg made Corn Flakes by accident. After successfully flaking wheat berry, he later flaked corn, and well, created Corn Flakes.

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Nachos

In 1943, a group of Texas army wives hopped the border and had dinner in a Mexican restaurant called Victory Club. When maitre d’ Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya noticed that the cook mysteriously went missing, he wanted to still feed the visiting women. Nacho ran in the kitchen, used his lack of cooking skills to put some cheese and jalapenos over a plate of tortilla chips. We can thank his improvisation for nachos.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

The origin of chocolate chip cookies has some cutesy storyteller points to it, that you may or may not choose to believe. According to Toll House, Ruth Wakefield accidentally invented the chocolate chip cookie when she ran out of traditional baker’s chocolate. She then decided to use chopped up semi-sweet chocolate morsels instead. Being an experienced baker, some have trouble believing that it was an accident, and it was something Wakefield already knew would work. But we’d like to think it was all done by accident, just because it’s more fun that way.

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Popsicles

According to History.com, Oakland, California native Frank Epperson accidentally left out a glass of water filled with soda powder, and a stick that he used for stirring. It was so cold that night, the glass of water froze. Epperson used hot water to take out the ice pop, and inadvertently made a nice frozen treat. After making pops for his friends and family, he eventually patented the icy invention. Oh, and it was his children who wanted to call them “Pop’s ‘sicles.”