June 21, 2012 • 36 mins
Every once in a while Chuck and Josh do things by the numbers and here's a good example. Turns out a surprising amount of ubiquitous items in our everyday lives were stumbled upon by accident. This episode explores a few of the more noteworthy ones.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(00:20):
And since we're here together, you can't see us, but
we are here. Don't be so solipsistic. Thanks. Did I
get that all right? I think so? Okay, Um, it's
a stuff you should know. But yeah, here we are. Um,
how are you doing? I'm great? Oh, I'm glad. I
(00:43):
like these little top tens. I think they're a nice
digestible light form of Hey, I'm gonna tell a couple
of these at the next dinner party. I throw. Yes,
they're like or dervs. Yeah exactly. They're like, um, pigs
in a blanket. Yeah, oh good hum it, pigs in
a planket. They're like cocktail wheaties in that particular barbecue
(01:04):
catch up mixture that stuff. I um, yeah, they're all
that and more chunk. That's right, I've got one for you.
We're talking about ten accidental inventions. Um, and I know
we've talked about this a lot, but I think it
bears repeating the accidental discovery of LSD of acid. Yeah,
(01:26):
probably one of the funniest things that's ever happened to
a chemist ever. Ye. Sure, Alb Alb Hoffman back in
the I think, started working at Sandos Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland,
and he decided, who's going to get to the bottom
of air got? And air got is it's a mold.
I believe our fungus I'm sorry that grows on rye
(01:48):
in particular um and has long been known to like
make people do crazy weird stuff. And they think that
maybe the Salem witch trials were the result of air
got poisoning. Sure, or the Enlightenment was a result of
got poison It's possible at quote unquote poisoning, right, Eric
got um craziness. Uh. And Albie Hoffman was trying to
(02:11):
um go like Alb, Yeah, he's dead, he can't hear okay. Uh.
He was trying to figure out, you know what what
you can do with us. He's been studying it for
a while and he came up with lysergic acid, dicyltamide
and um. He made several attempts at it and on
his derivative LSD. He got some honest hands, I guess
(02:32):
ingested it somehow fingertips. So he he has it on
his fingers and he goes home to lay down. He
starts seeing like fractals and colors in a kaleidoscope, and um,
the interested him, I guess you could say. So he
started researching heavily, like injecting it and getting bike rides
to him, his assistant and all that stuff. He took
(02:53):
it on. He took it on accident, and then three
days later he was like, maybe I should try that
for real, and then he got to ride home on
a bike from his assistant in April. Sixt Is now
referred to his bicycle day about those hippies and one
of his quotes that I thought was really great when
he first described it, he said it was quote a
(03:13):
not unpleasant, intoxicated like state. And that was on the
first time. Apparently by the bicycle trip got a little harry.
Oh really yeah, But then you know he passed through
that wave into the wave of not unpleasant once again. Right,
So he would say it was an accidental discovery of
(03:36):
the nature of the psychedelic nature, and he said we
should start using this stuff for like medicine. Yeah, well
the hippies had other ideas. Yes. He ultimately referred to
um LSD as his problem child. He wrote a book
called My Problem Child in I think it was kind
of one of those ones where it's like, you're my
(03:56):
problem child. Come here, here's some money. He wrote that
eight Why I believe so? Boy, I didn't realize he
lived that long. That's pretty cool. Yeah, he was an
old guy. Well, I mean he he drank a tablespoon
of LSD every day and that's what gave him his longevity.
I think. Uh so that's number one, right, or that's
actually number ten. That was the intro. Well it counts.
(04:18):
I don't think it should count. So you got another
one then an extra? Yeah, I'll just make it up.
Is apparently is what we do, uh, Josh. Number nine
corn Flakes is fictionalized in the TC boiled book The
Road to Wellville? Was that a TC boiled book? Yeah?
I didn't know that. He's great. Uh did you see
(04:39):
the movie? Uh? Yeah, I've not seen the movie or
read the book. Yeah, Matthew Broderick, Anthony Hopkins, it was good.
I've been the Battle Creek before that. Oh you really have?
When and that's the home of cereals, right Kellogg series
basically Kellogg's Cereal Here we go. Uh, Will Keith Kellogg,
he was um interested in medicine, and he was working
(05:01):
as a doctor at the Battle Creek Sanitarium with his
brother helping him out with and this is in the movie,
you know, like with their diets. He was trying out
sorts of weird treat huge on enemies. He also discovered,
uh or created the first acidophilis soy milk. Oh really yeah,
and some sort of meat alternative that ultimately led something
(05:21):
to something like American tofu or something. Yeah. Boy, what
a genius. Uh. And he is responsible, by accident for
corn flakes. Oh, Will was, and I'm sorry John Harvey,
his brother was responsible for those two things. Well it
runs in the family. Yeah. Um. He was making bread
one day at the old sanitarium there in Battle Creek. Uh.
(05:42):
He left a boiled wheat sitting out for a little
too long. He came back and he rolled into the
dough and it became flaky, which is not what he
was looking for. But he was like, you know what,
I thought this in the oven anyway, Let's see what
happens and it baked these little flakes that the patients
he were like, boy, these are delicious. We should pour
some milk over this stuff and cut a banana into
it and put it in a box. Can we get
(06:04):
some freez dride strawberries added? Exactly? And uh, eventually he
tinkered with it and switched it over to corn as
the main ingredients of wheat, and uh, that was corn flakes,
my friend, That's how I took off what's he added
or used corn? I'm sure it was kind of like,
this isn't good, but what is this? Wheat easies are terrible? Yeah, exactly,
(06:24):
And then he tried it with corn and they were like, oh,
that's really good. And that formed the Battle Creak Toasted
corn Flakes Company, which eventually became Kellogg's Accidental series. Whenever
he came up with the Battle Creak Toasted corn Flakes
Company name, you know he's wearing spats that that name
just like scream spat. What are spats of those the
(06:47):
little white covers that go over your shoes like Mr
Monopoly orbs are still learning that terrible movie as Yeah, Oscar,
I thought spats might have been the little sock leggings
but those are probably just eld soccer looking. I think
those are called sends or garters. We should bring that back. No, No,
(07:08):
let's die out for a good reason, all right, moving on?
Or do you have any other Kellogg's facts. I have
neither Kellogg's facts nor any more spats jokes, So I
think we should go on because this next one is
dyno might damn names for the Greek Greek route meaning
connected with power. Um. Alfred Nobel, Swedish scientists, accidentally discovered dynamite.
(07:33):
Uh when he was working on basically with nitroglycer and
he's working on explosives trying to make it stable. Well,
his father built mines. Oh is that how that started?
And you built minds using explosives, specifically nitroglycer But back
then it was kind of like, okay, eighty people died
because this nitroglycerin just exploded because someone looked at it wrong. Yeah. Well,
(07:54):
because we have it in a jar in the back
of a horse guard, right, that's part of the problem too.
But um, he law the brother and three other people
UM at his lab in Stockholm when he was trying
to figure out how to stabilize it. Um. But he
kept with it, uh, And so in the article it
says that he was transporting it and saw it packed
in the stuff this mud that we like to call
(08:18):
keisel ger, right, but I read it elsewhere that it
wasn't that. Ultimately, he came up with using Keiselger that
he dropped it and sawdust. He thought he was going
to die as he watched this vile fall nitroglyists and
fall out of his hand, but it landed on sawdustin
was absorbed and he went hot. That's weird. So then
(08:41):
he started if you mixed it within a nert material um,
you could conceivably blast it by adding a fuse to it.
He finally came up with keisel Ger, which is like
this kind of it's like sedimentary mud, right, yeah, it's
like it's real powdery. It's a domination of crust, fossil,
(09:01):
crushed fossil and marine life. Gotch like. It's what they use. Actually,
you'll probably see that it's what they use on film
sets when they want to make stuff look dirty, because
it's just like super light and powdery and makes it
look really super dirty. Kilger. Ye. Well, he also that
would be something he figured out how to stabilize nitroglycering
(09:21):
and created a stable explosive. UM. But he he combined
it with another previous invention of his based on the
initial ignition principle, which is not just using a fuse,
but having a fuse go to a blasting cap and
having a smaller explosive blow up your bigger explosive. He
put all that together and that was dynamite. Truly dynamite
(09:44):
it was. And um he again he was doing this
to build mines, but in his lifetime he saw his
invention used to like destroy human lives. He blew up
a lot of things himself by accident, a lot of
his factories. It wasn't just that one time. They basically
said you can't do this anymore on the mainland. So
he started work on a barge, and I think the
(10:06):
barge amount of even blown up. I'm sure everything blew up.
He was like King Midas, but everything exploded, that's right.
But um So, as part of his legacy, he created
the Nobel Peace Prize UM two. Well, I guess he
bequeathed it to basically say, hey, I a lot of
people have died because of my invention, so um, let's
(10:29):
let's promote safety and harmony and peace and then later
the ig Noo bells, Yeah, which kind of brought it
full circle in a way. Uh. He first named it
no Nobel's blasting powder, and then eventually it became dynamite. Um.
Not to be confused with T and T. It's different.
So A C. D C was wrong, T and T
(10:52):
I'm dynamite. It's not true. I know what you're saying.
What they should have said was T N T I'm
not quite dynamite. I'm less effective than dynamite. That should
have been the song. So what is T and T is?
Um is dynamite is sixty greater energy than TNT. Wow.
(11:12):
That's so it's two totally different things. It's not just
like a lesser degraded vernon. They're both high explosives, meaning
they detonate instead of like burning. But um, yeah, two
different things. So Scott was he was on the drink,
as we all find out, really like died because of
(11:34):
the drink. The dude with the hat, now that's that's
the second guy. Brian Johnson, the first lead singer UH
for the first however many albums, died in his car.
He passed out after a night drinking and did the
old choke on the vomit thing. But he was the
one that saying t NT yeah, Dynamite. I thought those
(11:56):
two guys were like what I thought T and T
and Dynamite wear up until then ago Now. Brian Johnson
came along later with Back in Black was his first album,
It's All That Good Early a c D sponsor. Gott
what do you think about? Sammy Hagar? So saccharin is
up next, Chuck, I feel like we should talk about sacharin.
(12:18):
Let's do it? Well, weird just really going down the
line here, aren't we It's an extradental invention number seven? Okay? Well, um,
so there's a guy who is named Constantine Fallberg. He
was working he was a chemist working in the labs
at Johns Hopkins under a guy named Ira Remsen. Yeah,
(12:39):
I recalls Constantine a jerk. He does, but not quite
for the reasons that are displayed here. Um so, uh,
Fallberg and Remsen are working on apparently substitute for coal tar.
That's all I could come across his quote. He was saying, like,
I've made many discoveries in my search for coal tars,
(13:00):
one of them accidental and here's one. But he doesn't say, like,
what I was doing was synthesizing chemicals in a search
for substitute for coal tarts. So I'm not going to
stand in a hundred percent behind it. But that's what
I think, right, okay? He uh. He said he was
in a great hurry and left the lab without washing
his hands. Apparently he wasn't wearing gloves or anything either
while he was working in the lab with these chemicals
(13:21):
that he didn't know what they were. Any Way, home
and he ate dinner and he was eating a piece
of bread and his bread was like really sweet, and
he realized that that was weird, so he put the
bread down and wiped his hands in his mouth and
his beard with the napkin kin. Yeah, he thought the
napkin was super sweet. He's like, okay, there's something we're
going on. He put two and two together and realized
(13:42):
it must have been that powder that he had on
his hands from the chemical that he spilled on it
that he didn't think to wash off before he ate
with his hands exactly, and it turned out to be sacharan.
So what does he do well? He he says, I
can probably make some money off this, and I'm of
the impression that he he shut out Remsen. So what
(14:03):
he did was Remsen was a total research He was
a total labrat. He didn't care a thing about patents,
and he was apparently fine with the idea that Fauberg
went off and independently patented this until it started making money, No,
until he started telling people that he was the one
that created this thing, but he was the senior researcher.
(14:23):
Then now he's screwing with Remsen's like lab rats status.
That's when Remsen was like, shut your mouth. So it
didn't have as much to do with money. His rep
exactly interesting. Yeah, So um Falberg ended up with the
patent for sacharn, and uh, years and years and years later,
the eighties happened. People are all cooked up, they're looking
(14:43):
for ways to like lose some weight, and sweet and
low comes along. It's sacharn and it has so few
calories and it apparently five calories a graham that it's
just listed a zero calories because you know that those
packets are a lot less than a graham. Um And
reason why it's non colork is because it's never metabolized.
By the body. It just goes out the way in
(15:06):
the same form it came in. Yeah, has zero food
energy value. Um. It's like if you were trapped freezing
in the woods and you had a big bucket of
sweet and low, it wouldn't be the same as if
you had a big bucket of sugar. Yeah, you'd want
the big bucket of sugar trapped in the woods. With
a big bucket of sugar. Huh, Well you got food
energy trapped in the woods of the big bucket of
(15:27):
sweet and low, You're screwed. Yeah. Can you imagine like
the fuzzy jackets on your teeth after eating a bucket
of sugar in the woods? Uh. Since it was brought
on the scene, it's kind of been added and removed
quite a few times too. The you can eat this,
it's fine, and it's probably not great for you list,
(15:47):
but right now it's in good standing. It is. It is,
you know, approved, because I remember in the late eighties
early nineties, like after everybody'd been drinking it for a while,
they took like a hard look at sacharin and we're like,
well it may cause cancer, and labrand I put it
in my unsweet iced tea I've seen, because that's the
only thing I can find that. You know, you put
sugar in there and it just sinks to the bottom.
(16:07):
What what Yeah, well that's why you have to use
the simple syrup. Yeah. Or put this sugar in the
hot brewed tea where it will melt. But you're not
going to do that. The new simple syrup is fine,
it works really well. Or just drink unsweet tea, for
God's sake. I'm on an unsweet tea kick right now.
A little lemon, yeah, see, I like the sweet tea,
or or if I drink green tea obviously that's just
(16:28):
straight up yeah, not the same. Have you ever had
this long tea? Yeah? Sure, yeah, that is something la la.
It's crazy, all right, josh, Um, I didn't think the microwave.
I feel like we've talked about that before. We have. Yeah,
so let's skip it, okay. Viagra, Yeah, I hadn't heard
(16:49):
of this one. I didn't realize it was accidental. You
haven't heard of viagra? Please? I've heard of yes, but
I haven't heard of the story behind it. When oh,
I see you're insinuate um. Simon Campbell and David Roberts
were researching proviser trying to develop some blood pressure and
(17:11):
heart medication for angina, and they tested it on people
doing some trials, and these guys were all like, I
still have some angina and I have a massive erection,
which is a weird side effect. You might want to
look into this, Yeah, And they did, and they went, Wow,
this could pay dividends in the infelis. Yeah. They basically said, Okay,
(17:33):
if d A forget everything we said, forget the angina,
where the nitrate um. Instead, we're gonna we're gonna just
start over do more clinical trials, but we're gonna needs
to treat e D. And we're going to target um handsome,
salt and pepper haired men of a certain age, um
(17:53):
who like to bathe and bathtubs outdoors next to their
partners who are also in bathtubs watching sunrise. It is
our target market, that wasn't. Yeah, it's all the same, though,
I wonder if it is all the same, you probably
just got us suit by the pharmacis. Actually they're not
all the same. They have each one has a different
um covalent bond. I'll bet it's covalent bond. Well, they
(18:14):
just have different properties. Some some work for like twenty
four hours, some work for like two hours. Some you
take every day just in case you happened to run
into someone and need to have sex. Yeah, yeah, but
all of them, all of them. Noism is not funny.
So I don't think it's funny because it's not. No
of course not. Okay, it's not. But it was popular.
(18:38):
Um sales peaked I think in two thousand eight at
one point nine billion dollars and new US alone, and
since then, obviously Vigor was the first on the scene,
but it has been chipped away at by its competitors.
But uh see Alis and uh what's the other one,
the vitra or is that heart medication? I can't keep track.
(18:59):
I think we found all. Yeah. Anyway, I mean that's
this was this was for originally for the treatment of Evangelina,
and it works some I think that that happens quite
a bit. Actually, well, it's all about blood flow, so
oh yes, it makes sense that it had that side effect.
I guess it's all about blood flow and self confidence.
That's right, pacemaker. I thought this one like, my eyes
(19:24):
started bleeding during this one. All right, we can skip
it because, as people know, when we do our top tens,
we generally do like six or seven of them. We
like to drive traffic to the site. That's right, Velcrow,
this one I have to give a shout out. I
wanted to. I want to tell everybody this is so amazing.
So I first heard the story of Velcrow when I
was just a young young pop. The story of Elcrow.
(19:47):
Yeah you're aware, right, the real story, yeah, okay, not
the fake in a s A story. No, not the
NASA story that George de Mostral story. He was a
Swiss Swiss um, I don't remember what he was, but
he turned out to be a Swiss inventor, electrical engineer, okay.
And he was hiking the Alps with his dog one
day and came home and there were birds attacher's dog
(20:08):
and he he said, that is ghastly. He said, um,
he what what's going on here? Why are these birds
attached to my dog? I'm going to take a closer look.
And he realized that the birds were composed of little
hooks and that his dog fur were acting as little loops,
and the hooks went into the loops and stuck and attached.
(20:29):
And he said, I can recreate this. You know what
I recreated with nylon, and that's what he did, and
that's what all velcro is is a system of hooks
and loops made of nylon. Now, I first learned that
story when I was probably like seriously eleven or twelve,
and I read it in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. And
every Christmas I would get in a bathroom reader, and
every every like December twenty nine, i'd be done with
(20:52):
like the five page bathroom Reader and wait like another year. Yeah,
like a lot, just for this reason, and I would
be reading this this book like over and over, like
just constantly, and so like one of the reasons that
we're here today. One of the reasons I'm here today
is because my curiosity was developed in hone through Uncle
(21:13):
John's Bathroom Readers. Yes, and it's been good in bath
like they were. They were also where I learned that
Genghis consumposedly killed like one point eight seven million people
in one hour, which kind of led to that article
and all that. Um, but my eyes were open. We
shouted out to them like recently, and they tweeted that
we shouted out to him, and I realized that they
(21:35):
listened to this podcast. So It's like the highest honor
I I have ever enjoyed as far as my career goes.
Like that, was it like this group that like made
me in part, in large part who I am today
is a fan of what we're doing. Yeah, I imagine
Mad Magazine could only come close if they got in
(21:55):
touch with you. Yeah, they would definitely be out there
as well. That's awesome. Okay, So that's yeah. And um,
a couple of more little factoids. It's a combination of
two French words, the lures, which you means velbot and
crochet which is hook yea and valor does not breathe
very well as a fabric. That's right. Nylon was very
new at the time, so he had a hard time
with it. And this is a lesson for all you
(22:16):
kids out there who fashion yourselves as or fancy yourselves
excuse me as the libenters. Don't give up. It took
him ten years from the moment he discovered what bell
Crow could be until the time that he could manufacture
it successfully. And he worked and he worked and he worked,
and ten years later he marketed it as the zipper
(22:38):
Less Zipper and the rest is history. And don't get
cheap velcro because you can tell the difference. Oh man,
you really can't same as cheap duck tape. Yeah, you
really get what you pay for. Yeah, that's definitely true
with duct tape. You don't want duct tape that doesn't
have the threads clearly visible. Yes, that form like kind
of the almost the rebar of it. It's exactly what
if you can't if you can't see it clearly like
(22:59):
in the old and just keep on moving. A little
advice from your uncle Josh. But that stick to it advice. Yeah,
not the duct tape. Stick to it decade appearance. That
was good advice. A decade of work. Uh. Penicillan, Yeah,
this one is. I don't think I realized penicillin was
an accident. Um Alexander Fleming. He was a bacteriologist in Scotland.
(23:22):
He um decided to get a little lazy and go
on vacation for two weeks. Luckily for us. In camp
comes home, sees a petri dish with this weird mold
that he hadn't seen before growing in it, and he noticed, like,
there's no bacteria around this mold. Right. It was like
hugging the side of the beach. Just like, get it
away from me. I know this stuff is killing me.
(23:44):
And he went, wow, I might be on something here, right,
But the problem was the strain of penicillin mold that
he discovered. He left his window open. The guy was
about slogist in the twentieth century. He left his window open,
right anyway, Um, the mold, the strain he found was
he couldn't reproduce it mass quantity. So there for you know,
(24:08):
by definition, it was useless as medicine. Uh. And then
like thirteen years later, a trio of guys Floory, Heatley
and Mowyer um found a strain of penicillin that they
could just grow very quickly in large amounts. BAM antibiotics
millions and millions possibly billion lives safe, but don't take
(24:31):
too much of it. No, And I think I think
these days, but you should always know your limits. Now
I'm just saying back, I think penicilla is one of
these days people get thrown up penicilla into moxicilla, like
for everything these days. Right. Well, the other part of
the problem, supposedly, UM, is that they if you don't
finish your course, that makes it that much easier for
(24:53):
UM bacteria. Yeah, that's what I hear. Microbes to evolve immunity. Yeah,
I almost never finish my course though, because you're part
of the problem. Gives me bad, bad, bad diarrhea. Well
you need to ride it out, as they say, get
yourself an Uncle John's bathroom reader. In fact, when I'm
on penicillin for one reason or another, I call them
(25:13):
diarrhea bills. I have to take my diarrhea bill because
I take it, and and they say, you know, that's
a possible side effect, but of course with me, it's
a certain side effect. At least you don't get a
pre epism from it, all right, Number one, Josh our
last one. I thought this was pretty interesting because going
(25:34):
back all the way to the eighteen hundreds, we used
to think people are all stuffy, didn't know how to
have a good time. All they did was just go
to school, go to church, walk to work, and study hard.
Turns out that they were having laughing gas parties and
ether frolics ether frolics where they would sit around and
suck on laughing gas and just laugh the night away,
(25:57):
which is where the phrase it's a gas comes from.
Oh that's nice, that makes sense, sure, you're a big
time in entomology, aren't and entomopagy. Yeah, that's right. Uh.
So what happened was anesthesia was accidentally discovered by It
seems like a few different people realized about the same
(26:18):
time from those parties. Yeah. Crawford Long, he's been Atlanta,
got right, Yeah, he's somewhere around Atlanta. Yeah. William Morton
and Charles Jackson and Horace Wells, um, they had all
experiment experimented with nitrous ox side um. Maybe maybe not
went to some of these parties. I don't know if
we can verify that. I I have seen that they
(26:40):
were at these parties. I went back in time and
looked in the way back machine. At some point someone said, Hey,
I just whacked my legoral hard and it didn't hurt
at all and it was bleeding. Yeah, and there was
no pain experience from it. And I think it was
Crawford Long that was like, what do you mean you're
not experiencing any pain? Do it again? Yeah, and let
me hold your ether for a minute exactly. Uh. And
(27:02):
then they started experimenting with it um and I think
Horace Wells used it for dentistry um and uh, it
comfered long. I was using it for surgery, Yeah, for
minor surgery, copper long like amputations and stuff like that,
because this is at a time when it was like
here's your broomstick, there's your bottle of whiskey, your leg off,
(27:24):
and like the a skilled surgeon was quick. That was
the that was the definition of skilled surgeon. Somebody you
could take your leg off in less than a minute. Well,
I think with you your best case scenarios that you'll
pass out from the pain, right, But they also loaded
you up on like booze and drugs, like you'd smoke
a lot of opium first or take a lot of
(27:44):
opium somehow, right, so you just wouldn't really care. You
Have you heard about the flesh eating bacteria that's going
around right now? Yeah, it's crazy watching out with the
netty pots, dude. Yeah, I actually I haven't netted in
a little while. Just remember bill water and then maybe
boil it already more boil it anyway. Yeah. Well, at
(28:05):
the very least, I do a lot of camping and
fishing and rivers. I'm not getting in with any open
sore anytime soon. No, But that that girl in Georgia, Um,
she was on the zip line, she fell and created
an open sore, and um, it got in there pretty
good apparently. Yeah, Emily, and I've been following that story closely.
That's like, but she's got a great attitude apparently about it.
(28:29):
And oh really yeah, like she you know, her dad
went in said, you know, finally told her we're gonna
have to amptate your hands your other foot after her
leg was already gone. She was like, let's do it.
So you have been telling me about this and she
was saying, like they just got her fingers that her
hands are intact right now. I don't think so. Are
her hands gone? I think so? Um. Wow, Yeah, it's
(28:50):
very sad. This one ended on a strange twist. Have
any more accidental inventions? I know you do, but don't
say them. Nope, there's a few more. Go to the
web site and read all about it. Yeah, type accidental
inventions in the search bar at how stuff works dot
com and it will bring up this fine article. There's
actually a few articles, um that I have similar ones,
(29:11):
but different ones too. You'll just read them all you
love them? Um, I said search bar at how stuff
works dot com again, which means it's time for listener
to mail. Actually wait, wait, we can't do listen to
Melia this again. Yeah, okay, it's plug fast time. Um so, Chuck,
we have a horror fiction contest going on, don't we
That's right, real quick, give them the broad stroke. Well,
(29:34):
if you're familiar with our Halloween episodes the past two years,
we do readings right from u PO last year and
uh what's his Face? The year before that, HP love
love Craft and this year we want to read a
story written by you someone out there. So we are
throwing a contest, and Josh wrote a great blog post
(29:55):
outlining the details. You can find a how stuff works. Yeah,
you can go to blogs that how stuff works and
it's called um the Stuff you should knows Horror fiction contests.
Get your official rules right here. It's got everything you
need to know on there. Everything. What's the highlight? Well,
the highlights are that it started on June eighteenth and
it runs until July twenty. Uh you it has to
(30:19):
have been previously unpublished and includes websites. If you put
it up on your own blog, I think it's okay,
But like if you gave you to somebody else and
they published it sorry. Um, and uh, it needs to
be between three thousand and four thousand words, no more,
no less. And this is really really, really really important
your stay. When in the email that you send this in,
you send it by the way to how stuff works
(30:41):
Underscore contests at Discovery dot Com. In that email when
you enter your submission, Um, you need to write the words.
By entering this contest, I agree to abide by the
contest rules. Without that, it's it's we have to disqualify.
So that space sically, you're signing off that you understand
(31:02):
the rules by by acknowledging that statement. Right, Okay, go
to the blogs and read the rules first. Take a
quick glance at them. There's if you have a question,
it's probably answered there. Yeah, and sadly we know and
we understand that this is only for residents in the
United States, and we're sorry, but that's just how it goes.
I've said it a million times. We can't win your
country's contest either. It's just our contest work. Yes, pick
(31:25):
it up with the contest Gods. If you're seventeen, even
if you're going to turn eight team within the contest,
you're out of luck. Here to be eighteen as of
Monday July or June eighteen. People don't like rules, No,
they don't, but we're not making them. Gotta have them. Yeah,
so it send it off us and maybe a couple
of other writers or editors will judge these things. We're
(31:46):
gonna select the top sixteen and then enter him into
a bracket contest, then let the people vote, and then
we picked the and then the winner has chosen and
we read it on hearticle. Yeah, alright, what else? We're
going to Comic Con in San Diego for the first
time ever and Thursday we don't have the time yet,
but Thursday July, well, well, we will be doing a
(32:08):
live podcast panel with special guests. Yeah, what are we
doing it on? You want to say? Do you want
to keep it a suppris, Let's keep it a surprise
for now, all right, So comm Con, if you're gonna
be there, come see us Thursday, I think, right, yeah,
you'll be able to find out. Well, we'll post it
once we can reveal all the story details. Very cool.
So um, there you go. That's plug fest and now
(32:29):
it's time for listening. Now, right, Josh, I'm gonna call
this what we're gonna call medical marijuana. Uh. Um. And
by the way, on email, I've been answering more and
more lately because I've had more time. UM. But still,
if you write in and I don't answer, we have
read it, I promise. And if you have sent in
just a simple suggestion for a show, we log those. Um.
(32:53):
But you may not get the email back on something
like that. So just I don't want anyone to feel
bad if think emailed like we didn't respond. You're a valued,
valued member of our fan base. Okay, medical marijuana. Uh.
Your show on m m J is what some people
have been calling at. Realize that I always think it's
(33:13):
like Key Martin and you or something like and John. Uh.
It reminded me of a funny story I can share.
During the early eighties, my father had a rare cancer. Um.
It's even rare these days from the surprise my doctors
have when I give my medical history. At one point,
my dad's doctor suggested he tried marijuana to help with
(33:33):
the chemo sickness. Um. Of course, there was no way
to prescribe it back then. You had to get it
on your own. My parents started asking around to see
whose kids could get some trustworthy stuff. With no luck
where we lived, my mom turned to a relative who
lived in another state. So clearly like the stoner cousin,
like two states over, Um, she could get it, but
(33:54):
I don't know the details how. Yeah. The next problem
was how to get it to us. Um. She often
flew to visit every few months, but it was a
pray to putting it in her luggage or mailing it,
even though everybody used to do that back then. I
bet um. So one of her co workers had an idea.
They worked in a doctor's office and decided she would
hide it between her breasts and bandage her as if
(34:17):
she had recently had breast surgery. She was sent with
the note saying under no circumstances, with the bandages to
be removed. They thought that if she was hassled the airport,
a note would get her out of trouble. They did
this actually a few times. It never got caught. Oh
my god, I an't that crazy. As it turns out,
my father couldn't smoke the stuff. It made him sicker. Um,
Oh my god, I know. So he decided to brew
(34:40):
it in tea, and I'm sure there was a little
h baked snack put in his lunch bag every now
and then. Unfortunately, my father passed away in when I
was sixteen. I wasn't completely involved in all this other stuff.
The stories were retold later, but there are a lot
of hijinks going on in the house over those years,
so this is totally plausible. I remember vividly the little
(35:03):
t ball sitting in the sink when I washed the
dishes every night, asking can I clean the thing? And
I would get a resounding no from about five people
in the house at the same time. So that is
from Cindy, and uh no, that's anybody. But she asked
her if I could read this, and she said yes,
and then she wrote me back and said, you know,
I ended up talking to my mom about this and
(35:25):
we all had a good laugh all over again, you know,
and remember my father Blondly she said her mom ended
up smoking some for her anxiety. So you should probably
wipe your hard drive clean of that email lest somebody
sure the FEDS come in a compassed at your computer. Yeah,
it's it's serious though. Um. Yeah, if you have like
(35:48):
a wacky family history story, those are awesome, don't we all?
That's that's pretty wacky though, man. Yeah, It's like little
Miss Sunshine wacky. I haven't seen it, I just know
of it. It's funny. Um, we want to hear it,
so tweet to us at s y s K podcast,
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, or email
(36:08):
at Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff works
dot com. H brought to you by the reinvented two
(36:29):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(00:20):
And since we're here together, you can't see us, but
we are here. Don't be so solipsistic. Thanks. Did I
get that all right? I think so? Okay, Um, it's
a stuff you should know. But yeah, here we are. Um,
how are you doing? I'm great? Oh, I'm glad. I
(00:43):
like these little top tens. I think they're a nice
digestible light form of Hey, I'm gonna tell a couple
of these at the next dinner party. I throw. Yes,
they're like or dervs. Yeah exactly. They're like, um, pigs
in a blanket. Yeah, oh good hum it, pigs in
a planket. They're like cocktail wheaties in that particular barbecue
(01:04):
catch up mixture that stuff. I um, yeah, they're all
that and more chunk. That's right, I've got one for you.
We're talking about ten accidental inventions. Um, and I know
we've talked about this a lot, but I think it
bears repeating the accidental discovery of LSD of acid. Yeah,
(01:26):
probably one of the funniest things that's ever happened to
a chemist ever. Ye. Sure, Alb Alb Hoffman back in
the I think, started working at Sandos Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland,
and he decided, who's going to get to the bottom
of air got? And air got is it's a mold.
I believe our fungus I'm sorry that grows on rye
(01:48):
in particular um and has long been known to like
make people do crazy weird stuff. And they think that
maybe the Salem witch trials were the result of air
got poisoning. Sure, or the Enlightenment was a result of
got poison It's possible at quote unquote poisoning, right, Eric
got um craziness. Uh. And Albie Hoffman was trying to
(02:11):
um go like Alb, Yeah, he's dead, he can't hear okay. Uh.
He was trying to figure out, you know what what
you can do with us. He's been studying it for
a while and he came up with lysergic acid, dicyltamide
and um. He made several attempts at it and on
his derivative LSD. He got some honest hands, I guess
(02:32):
ingested it somehow fingertips. So he he has it on
his fingers and he goes home to lay down. He
starts seeing like fractals and colors in a kaleidoscope, and um,
the interested him, I guess you could say. So he
started researching heavily, like injecting it and getting bike rides
to him, his assistant and all that stuff. He took
(02:53):
it on. He took it on accident, and then three
days later he was like, maybe I should try that
for real, and then he got to ride home on
a bike from his assistant in April. Sixt Is now
referred to his bicycle day about those hippies and one
of his quotes that I thought was really great when
he first described it, he said it was quote a
(03:13):
not unpleasant, intoxicated like state. And that was on the
first time. Apparently by the bicycle trip got a little harry.
Oh really yeah, But then you know he passed through
that wave into the wave of not unpleasant once again. Right,
So he would say it was an accidental discovery of
(03:36):
the nature of the psychedelic nature, and he said we
should start using this stuff for like medicine. Yeah, well
the hippies had other ideas. Yes. He ultimately referred to
um LSD as his problem child. He wrote a book
called My Problem Child in I think it was kind
of one of those ones where it's like, you're my
(03:56):
problem child. Come here, here's some money. He wrote that
eight Why I believe so? Boy, I didn't realize he
lived that long. That's pretty cool. Yeah, he was an
old guy. Well, I mean he he drank a tablespoon
of LSD every day and that's what gave him his longevity.
I think. Uh so that's number one, right, or that's
actually number ten. That was the intro. Well it counts.
(04:18):
I don't think it should count. So you got another
one then an extra? Yeah, I'll just make it up.
Is apparently is what we do, uh, Josh. Number nine
corn Flakes is fictionalized in the TC boiled book The
Road to Wellville? Was that a TC boiled book? Yeah?
I didn't know that. He's great. Uh did you see
(04:39):
the movie? Uh? Yeah, I've not seen the movie or
read the book. Yeah, Matthew Broderick, Anthony Hopkins, it was good.
I've been the Battle Creek before that. Oh you really have?
When and that's the home of cereals, right Kellogg series
basically Kellogg's Cereal Here we go. Uh, Will Keith Kellogg,
he was um interested in medicine, and he was working
(05:01):
as a doctor at the Battle Creek Sanitarium with his
brother helping him out with and this is in the movie,
you know, like with their diets. He was trying out
sorts of weird treat huge on enemies. He also discovered,
uh or created the first acidophilis soy milk. Oh really yeah,
and some sort of meat alternative that ultimately led something
(05:21):
to something like American tofu or something. Yeah. Boy, what
a genius. Uh. And he is responsible, by accident for
corn flakes. Oh, Will was, and I'm sorry John Harvey,
his brother was responsible for those two things. Well it
runs in the family. Yeah. Um. He was making bread
one day at the old sanitarium there in Battle Creek. Uh.
(05:42):
He left a boiled wheat sitting out for a little
too long. He came back and he rolled into the
dough and it became flaky, which is not what he
was looking for. But he was like, you know what,
I thought this in the oven anyway, Let's see what
happens and it baked these little flakes that the patients
he were like, boy, these are delicious. We should pour
some milk over this stuff and cut a banana into
it and put it in a box. Can we get
(06:04):
some freez dride strawberries added? Exactly? And uh, eventually he
tinkered with it and switched it over to corn as
the main ingredients of wheat, and uh, that was corn flakes,
my friend, That's how I took off what's he added
or used corn? I'm sure it was kind of like,
this isn't good, but what is this? Wheat easies are terrible? Yeah, exactly,
(06:24):
And then he tried it with corn and they were like, oh,
that's really good. And that formed the Battle Creak Toasted
corn Flakes Company, which eventually became Kellogg's Accidental series. Whenever
he came up with the Battle Creak Toasted corn Flakes
Company name, you know he's wearing spats that that name
just like scream spat. What are spats of those the
(06:47):
little white covers that go over your shoes like Mr
Monopoly orbs are still learning that terrible movie as Yeah, Oscar,
I thought spats might have been the little sock leggings
but those are probably just eld soccer looking. I think
those are called sends or garters. We should bring that back. No, No,
(07:08):
let's die out for a good reason, all right, moving on?
Or do you have any other Kellogg's facts. I have
neither Kellogg's facts nor any more spats jokes, So I
think we should go on because this next one is
dyno might damn names for the Greek Greek route meaning
connected with power. Um. Alfred Nobel, Swedish scientists, accidentally discovered dynamite.
(07:33):
Uh when he was working on basically with nitroglycer and
he's working on explosives trying to make it stable. Well,
his father built mines. Oh is that how that started?
And you built minds using explosives, specifically nitroglycer But back
then it was kind of like, okay, eighty people died
because this nitroglycerin just exploded because someone looked at it wrong. Yeah. Well,
(07:54):
because we have it in a jar in the back
of a horse guard, right, that's part of the problem too.
But um, he law the brother and three other people
UM at his lab in Stockholm when he was trying
to figure out how to stabilize it. Um. But he
kept with it, uh, And so in the article it
says that he was transporting it and saw it packed
in the stuff this mud that we like to call
(08:18):
keisel ger, right, but I read it elsewhere that it
wasn't that. Ultimately, he came up with using Keiselger that
he dropped it and sawdust. He thought he was going
to die as he watched this vile fall nitroglyists and
fall out of his hand, but it landed on sawdustin
was absorbed and he went hot. That's weird. So then
(08:41):
he started if you mixed it within a nert material um,
you could conceivably blast it by adding a fuse to it.
He finally came up with keisel Ger, which is like
this kind of it's like sedimentary mud, right, yeah, it's
like it's real powdery. It's a domination of crust, fossil,
(09:01):
crushed fossil and marine life. Gotch like. It's what they use. Actually,
you'll probably see that it's what they use on film
sets when they want to make stuff look dirty, because
it's just like super light and powdery and makes it
look really super dirty. Kilger. Ye. Well, he also that
would be something he figured out how to stabilize nitroglycering
(09:21):
and created a stable explosive. UM. But he he combined
it with another previous invention of his based on the
initial ignition principle, which is not just using a fuse,
but having a fuse go to a blasting cap and
having a smaller explosive blow up your bigger explosive. He
put all that together and that was dynamite. Truly dynamite
(09:44):
it was. And um he again he was doing this
to build mines, but in his lifetime he saw his
invention used to like destroy human lives. He blew up
a lot of things himself by accident, a lot of
his factories. It wasn't just that one time. They basically
said you can't do this anymore on the mainland. So
he started work on a barge, and I think the
(10:06):
barge amount of even blown up. I'm sure everything blew up.
He was like King Midas, but everything exploded, that's right.
But um So, as part of his legacy, he created
the Nobel Peace Prize UM two. Well, I guess he
bequeathed it to basically say, hey, I a lot of
people have died because of my invention, so um, let's
(10:29):
let's promote safety and harmony and peace and then later
the ig Noo bells, Yeah, which kind of brought it
full circle in a way. Uh. He first named it
no Nobel's blasting powder, and then eventually it became dynamite. Um.
Not to be confused with T and T. It's different.
So A C. D C was wrong, T and T
(10:52):
I'm dynamite. It's not true. I know what you're saying.
What they should have said was T N T I'm
not quite dynamite. I'm less effective than dynamite. That should
have been the song. So what is T and T is?
Um is dynamite is sixty greater energy than TNT. Wow.
(11:12):
That's so it's two totally different things. It's not just
like a lesser degraded vernon. They're both high explosives, meaning
they detonate instead of like burning. But um, yeah, two
different things. So Scott was he was on the drink,
as we all find out, really like died because of
(11:34):
the drink. The dude with the hat, now that's that's
the second guy. Brian Johnson, the first lead singer UH
for the first however many albums, died in his car.
He passed out after a night drinking and did the
old choke on the vomit thing. But he was the
one that saying t NT yeah, Dynamite. I thought those
(11:56):
two guys were like what I thought T and T
and Dynamite wear up until then ago Now. Brian Johnson
came along later with Back in Black was his first album,
It's All That Good Early a c D sponsor. Gott
what do you think about? Sammy Hagar? So saccharin is
up next, Chuck, I feel like we should talk about sacharin.
(12:18):
Let's do it? Well, weird just really going down the
line here, aren't we It's an extradental invention number seven? Okay? Well, um,
so there's a guy who is named Constantine Fallberg. He
was working he was a chemist working in the labs
at Johns Hopkins under a guy named Ira Remsen. Yeah,
(12:39):
I recalls Constantine a jerk. He does, but not quite
for the reasons that are displayed here. Um so, uh,
Fallberg and Remsen are working on apparently substitute for coal tar.
That's all I could come across his quote. He was saying, like,
I've made many discoveries in my search for coal tars,
(13:00):
one of them accidental and here's one. But he doesn't say, like,
what I was doing was synthesizing chemicals in a search
for substitute for coal tarts. So I'm not going to
stand in a hundred percent behind it. But that's what
I think, right, okay? He uh. He said he was
in a great hurry and left the lab without washing
his hands. Apparently he wasn't wearing gloves or anything either
while he was working in the lab with these chemicals
(13:21):
that he didn't know what they were. Any Way, home
and he ate dinner and he was eating a piece
of bread and his bread was like really sweet, and
he realized that that was weird, so he put the
bread down and wiped his hands in his mouth and
his beard with the napkin kin. Yeah, he thought the
napkin was super sweet. He's like, okay, there's something we're
going on. He put two and two together and realized
(13:42):
it must have been that powder that he had on
his hands from the chemical that he spilled on it
that he didn't think to wash off before he ate
with his hands exactly, and it turned out to be sacharan.
So what does he do well? He he says, I
can probably make some money off this, and I'm of
the impression that he he shut out Remsen. So what
(14:03):
he did was Remsen was a total research He was
a total labrat. He didn't care a thing about patents,
and he was apparently fine with the idea that Fauberg
went off and independently patented this until it started making money, No,
until he started telling people that he was the one
that created this thing, but he was the senior researcher.
(14:23):
Then now he's screwing with Remsen's like lab rats status.
That's when Remsen was like, shut your mouth. So it
didn't have as much to do with money. His rep
exactly interesting. Yeah, So um Falberg ended up with the
patent for sacharn, and uh, years and years and years later,
the eighties happened. People are all cooked up, they're looking
(14:43):
for ways to like lose some weight, and sweet and
low comes along. It's sacharn and it has so few
calories and it apparently five calories a graham that it's
just listed a zero calories because you know that those
packets are a lot less than a graham. Um And
reason why it's non colork is because it's never metabolized.
By the body. It just goes out the way in
(15:06):
the same form it came in. Yeah, has zero food
energy value. Um. It's like if you were trapped freezing
in the woods and you had a big bucket of
sweet and low, it wouldn't be the same as if
you had a big bucket of sugar. Yeah, you'd want
the big bucket of sugar trapped in the woods. With
a big bucket of sugar. Huh, Well you got food
energy trapped in the woods of the big bucket of
(15:27):
sweet and low, You're screwed. Yeah. Can you imagine like
the fuzzy jackets on your teeth after eating a bucket
of sugar in the woods? Uh. Since it was brought
on the scene, it's kind of been added and removed
quite a few times too. The you can eat this,
it's fine, and it's probably not great for you list,
(15:47):
but right now it's in good standing. It is. It is,
you know, approved, because I remember in the late eighties
early nineties, like after everybody'd been drinking it for a while,
they took like a hard look at sacharin and we're like,
well it may cause cancer, and labrand I put it
in my unsweet iced tea I've seen, because that's the
only thing I can find that. You know, you put
sugar in there and it just sinks to the bottom.
(16:07):
What what Yeah, well that's why you have to use
the simple syrup. Yeah. Or put this sugar in the
hot brewed tea where it will melt. But you're not
going to do that. The new simple syrup is fine,
it works really well. Or just drink unsweet tea, for
God's sake. I'm on an unsweet tea kick right now.
A little lemon, yeah, see, I like the sweet tea,
or or if I drink green tea obviously that's just
(16:28):
straight up yeah, not the same. Have you ever had
this long tea? Yeah? Sure, yeah, that is something la la.
It's crazy, all right, josh, Um, I didn't think the microwave.
I feel like we've talked about that before. We have. Yeah,
so let's skip it, okay. Viagra, Yeah, I hadn't heard
(16:49):
of this one. I didn't realize it was accidental. You
haven't heard of viagra? Please? I've heard of yes, but
I haven't heard of the story behind it. When oh,
I see you're insinuate um. Simon Campbell and David Roberts
were researching proviser trying to develop some blood pressure and
(17:11):
heart medication for angina, and they tested it on people
doing some trials, and these guys were all like, I
still have some angina and I have a massive erection,
which is a weird side effect. You might want to
look into this, Yeah, And they did, and they went, Wow,
this could pay dividends in the infelis. Yeah. They basically said, Okay,
(17:33):
if d A forget everything we said, forget the angina,
where the nitrate um. Instead, we're gonna we're gonna just
start over do more clinical trials, but we're gonna needs
to treat e D. And we're going to target um handsome,
salt and pepper haired men of a certain age, um
(17:53):
who like to bathe and bathtubs outdoors next to their
partners who are also in bathtubs watching sunrise. It is
our target market, that wasn't. Yeah, it's all the same, though,
I wonder if it is all the same, you probably
just got us suit by the pharmacis. Actually they're not
all the same. They have each one has a different
um covalent bond. I'll bet it's covalent bond. Well, they
(18:14):
just have different properties. Some some work for like twenty
four hours, some work for like two hours. Some you
take every day just in case you happened to run
into someone and need to have sex. Yeah, yeah, but
all of them, all of them. Noism is not funny.
So I don't think it's funny because it's not. No
of course not. Okay, it's not. But it was popular.
(18:38):
Um sales peaked I think in two thousand eight at
one point nine billion dollars and new US alone, and
since then, obviously Vigor was the first on the scene,
but it has been chipped away at by its competitors.
But uh see Alis and uh what's the other one,
the vitra or is that heart medication? I can't keep track.
(18:59):
I think we found all. Yeah. Anyway, I mean that's
this was this was for originally for the treatment of Evangelina,
and it works some I think that that happens quite
a bit. Actually, well, it's all about blood flow, so
oh yes, it makes sense that it had that side effect.
I guess it's all about blood flow and self confidence.
That's right, pacemaker. I thought this one like, my eyes
(19:24):
started bleeding during this one. All right, we can skip
it because, as people know, when we do our top tens,
we generally do like six or seven of them. We
like to drive traffic to the site. That's right, Velcrow,
this one I have to give a shout out. I
wanted to. I want to tell everybody this is so amazing.
So I first heard the story of Velcrow when I
was just a young young pop. The story of Elcrow.
(19:47):
Yeah you're aware, right, the real story, yeah, okay, not
the fake in a s A story. No, not the
NASA story that George de Mostral story. He was a
Swiss Swiss um, I don't remember what he was, but
he turned out to be a Swiss inventor, electrical engineer, okay.
And he was hiking the Alps with his dog one
day and came home and there were birds attacher's dog
(20:08):
and he he said, that is ghastly. He said, um,
he what what's going on here? Why are these birds
attached to my dog? I'm going to take a closer look.
And he realized that the birds were composed of little
hooks and that his dog fur were acting as little loops,
and the hooks went into the loops and stuck and attached.
(20:29):
And he said, I can recreate this. You know what
I recreated with nylon, and that's what he did, and
that's what all velcro is is a system of hooks
and loops made of nylon. Now, I first learned that
story when I was probably like seriously eleven or twelve,
and I read it in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. And
every Christmas I would get in a bathroom reader, and
every every like December twenty nine, i'd be done with
(20:52):
like the five page bathroom Reader and wait like another year. Yeah,
like a lot, just for this reason, and I would
be reading this this book like over and over, like
just constantly, and so like one of the reasons that
we're here today. One of the reasons I'm here today
is because my curiosity was developed in hone through Uncle
(21:13):
John's Bathroom Readers. Yes, and it's been good in bath
like they were. They were also where I learned that
Genghis consumposedly killed like one point eight seven million people
in one hour, which kind of led to that article
and all that. Um, but my eyes were open. We
shouted out to them like recently, and they tweeted that
we shouted out to him, and I realized that they
(21:35):
listened to this podcast. So It's like the highest honor
I I have ever enjoyed as far as my career goes.
Like that, was it like this group that like made
me in part, in large part who I am today
is a fan of what we're doing. Yeah, I imagine
Mad Magazine could only come close if they got in
(21:55):
touch with you. Yeah, they would definitely be out there
as well. That's awesome. Okay, So that's yeah. And um,
a couple of more little factoids. It's a combination of
two French words, the lures, which you means velbot and
crochet which is hook yea and valor does not breathe
very well as a fabric. That's right. Nylon was very
new at the time, so he had a hard time
with it. And this is a lesson for all you
(22:16):
kids out there who fashion yourselves as or fancy yourselves
excuse me as the libenters. Don't give up. It took
him ten years from the moment he discovered what bell
Crow could be until the time that he could manufacture
it successfully. And he worked and he worked and he worked,
and ten years later he marketed it as the zipper
(22:38):
Less Zipper and the rest is history. And don't get
cheap velcro because you can tell the difference. Oh man,
you really can't same as cheap duck tape. Yeah, you
really get what you pay for. Yeah, that's definitely true
with duct tape. You don't want duct tape that doesn't
have the threads clearly visible. Yes, that form like kind
of the almost the rebar of it. It's exactly what
if you can't if you can't see it clearly like
(22:59):
in the old and just keep on moving. A little
advice from your uncle Josh. But that stick to it advice. Yeah,
not the duct tape. Stick to it decade appearance. That
was good advice. A decade of work. Uh. Penicillan, Yeah,
this one is. I don't think I realized penicillin was
an accident. Um Alexander Fleming. He was a bacteriologist in Scotland.
(23:22):
He um decided to get a little lazy and go
on vacation for two weeks. Luckily for us. In camp
comes home, sees a petri dish with this weird mold
that he hadn't seen before growing in it, and he noticed, like,
there's no bacteria around this mold. Right. It was like
hugging the side of the beach. Just like, get it
away from me. I know this stuff is killing me.
(23:44):
And he went, wow, I might be on something here, right,
But the problem was the strain of penicillin mold that
he discovered. He left his window open. The guy was
about slogist in the twentieth century. He left his window open,
right anyway, Um, the mold, the strain he found was
he couldn't reproduce it mass quantity. So there for you know,
(24:08):
by definition, it was useless as medicine. Uh. And then
like thirteen years later, a trio of guys Floory, Heatley
and Mowyer um found a strain of penicillin that they
could just grow very quickly in large amounts. BAM antibiotics
millions and millions possibly billion lives safe, but don't take
(24:31):
too much of it. No, And I think I think
these days, but you should always know your limits. Now
I'm just saying back, I think penicilla is one of
these days people get thrown up penicilla into moxicilla, like
for everything these days. Right. Well, the other part of
the problem, supposedly, UM, is that they if you don't
finish your course, that makes it that much easier for
(24:53):
UM bacteria. Yeah, that's what I hear. Microbes to evolve immunity. Yeah,
I almost never finish my course though, because you're part
of the problem. Gives me bad, bad, bad diarrhea. Well
you need to ride it out, as they say, get
yourself an Uncle John's bathroom reader. In fact, when I'm
on penicillin for one reason or another, I call them
(25:13):
diarrhea bills. I have to take my diarrhea bill because
I take it, and and they say, you know, that's
a possible side effect, but of course with me, it's
a certain side effect. At least you don't get a
pre epism from it, all right, Number one, Josh our
last one. I thought this was pretty interesting because going
(25:34):
back all the way to the eighteen hundreds, we used
to think people are all stuffy, didn't know how to
have a good time. All they did was just go
to school, go to church, walk to work, and study hard.
Turns out that they were having laughing gas parties and
ether frolics ether frolics where they would sit around and
suck on laughing gas and just laugh the night away,
(25:57):
which is where the phrase it's a gas comes from.
Oh that's nice, that makes sense, sure, you're a big
time in entomology, aren't and entomopagy. Yeah, that's right. Uh.
So what happened was anesthesia was accidentally discovered by It
seems like a few different people realized about the same
(26:18):
time from those parties. Yeah. Crawford Long, he's been Atlanta,
got right, Yeah, he's somewhere around Atlanta. Yeah. William Morton
and Charles Jackson and Horace Wells, um, they had all
experiment experimented with nitrous ox side um. Maybe maybe not
went to some of these parties. I don't know if
we can verify that. I I have seen that they
(26:40):
were at these parties. I went back in time and
looked in the way back machine. At some point someone said, Hey,
I just whacked my legoral hard and it didn't hurt
at all and it was bleeding. Yeah, and there was
no pain experience from it. And I think it was
Crawford Long that was like, what do you mean you're
not experiencing any pain? Do it again? Yeah, and let
me hold your ether for a minute exactly. Uh. And
(27:02):
then they started experimenting with it um and I think
Horace Wells used it for dentistry um and uh, it
comfered long. I was using it for surgery, Yeah, for
minor surgery, copper long like amputations and stuff like that,
because this is at a time when it was like
here's your broomstick, there's your bottle of whiskey, your leg off,
(27:24):
and like the a skilled surgeon was quick. That was
the that was the definition of skilled surgeon. Somebody you
could take your leg off in less than a minute. Well,
I think with you your best case scenarios that you'll
pass out from the pain, right, But they also loaded
you up on like booze and drugs, like you'd smoke
a lot of opium first or take a lot of
(27:44):
opium somehow, right, so you just wouldn't really care. You
Have you heard about the flesh eating bacteria that's going
around right now? Yeah, it's crazy watching out with the
netty pots, dude. Yeah, I actually I haven't netted in
a little while. Just remember bill water and then maybe
boil it already more boil it anyway. Yeah. Well, at
(28:05):
the very least, I do a lot of camping and
fishing and rivers. I'm not getting in with any open
sore anytime soon. No, But that that girl in Georgia, Um,
she was on the zip line, she fell and created
an open sore, and um, it got in there pretty
good apparently. Yeah, Emily, and I've been following that story closely.
That's like, but she's got a great attitude apparently about it.
(28:29):
And oh really yeah, like she you know, her dad
went in said, you know, finally told her we're gonna
have to amptate your hands your other foot after her
leg was already gone. She was like, let's do it.
So you have been telling me about this and she
was saying, like they just got her fingers that her
hands are intact right now. I don't think so. Are
her hands gone? I think so? Um. Wow, Yeah, it's
(28:50):
very sad. This one ended on a strange twist. Have
any more accidental inventions? I know you do, but don't
say them. Nope, there's a few more. Go to the
web site and read all about it. Yeah, type accidental
inventions in the search bar at how stuff works dot
com and it will bring up this fine article. There's
actually a few articles, um that I have similar ones,
(29:11):
but different ones too. You'll just read them all you
love them? Um, I said search bar at how stuff
works dot com again, which means it's time for listener
to mail. Actually wait, wait, we can't do listen to
Melia this again. Yeah, okay, it's plug fast time. Um so, Chuck,
we have a horror fiction contest going on, don't we
That's right, real quick, give them the broad stroke. Well,
(29:34):
if you're familiar with our Halloween episodes the past two years,
we do readings right from u PO last year and
uh what's his Face? The year before that, HP love
love Craft and this year we want to read a
story written by you someone out there. So we are
throwing a contest, and Josh wrote a great blog post
(29:55):
outlining the details. You can find a how stuff works. Yeah,
you can go to blogs that how stuff works and
it's called um the Stuff you should knows Horror fiction contests.
Get your official rules right here. It's got everything you
need to know on there. Everything. What's the highlight? Well,
the highlights are that it started on June eighteenth and
it runs until July twenty. Uh you it has to
(30:19):
have been previously unpublished and includes websites. If you put
it up on your own blog, I think it's okay,
But like if you gave you to somebody else and
they published it sorry. Um, and uh, it needs to
be between three thousand and four thousand words, no more,
no less. And this is really really, really really important
your stay. When in the email that you send this in,
you send it by the way to how stuff works
(30:41):
Underscore contests at Discovery dot Com. In that email when
you enter your submission, Um, you need to write the words.
By entering this contest, I agree to abide by the
contest rules. Without that, it's it's we have to disqualify.
So that space sically, you're signing off that you understand
(31:02):
the rules by by acknowledging that statement. Right, Okay, go
to the blogs and read the rules first. Take a
quick glance at them. There's if you have a question,
it's probably answered there. Yeah, and sadly we know and
we understand that this is only for residents in the
United States, and we're sorry, but that's just how it goes.
I've said it a million times. We can't win your
country's contest either. It's just our contest work. Yes, pick
(31:25):
it up with the contest Gods. If you're seventeen, even
if you're going to turn eight team within the contest,
you're out of luck. Here to be eighteen as of
Monday July or June eighteen. People don't like rules, No,
they don't, but we're not making them. Gotta have them. Yeah,
so it send it off us and maybe a couple
of other writers or editors will judge these things. We're
(31:46):
gonna select the top sixteen and then enter him into
a bracket contest, then let the people vote, and then
we picked the and then the winner has chosen and
we read it on hearticle. Yeah, alright, what else? We're
going to Comic Con in San Diego for the first
time ever and Thursday we don't have the time yet,
but Thursday July, well, well, we will be doing a
(32:08):
live podcast panel with special guests. Yeah, what are we
doing it on? You want to say? Do you want
to keep it a suppris, Let's keep it a surprise
for now, all right, So comm Con, if you're gonna
be there, come see us Thursday, I think, right, yeah,
you'll be able to find out. Well, we'll post it
once we can reveal all the story details. Very cool.
So um, there you go. That's plug fest and now
(32:29):
it's time for listening. Now, right, Josh, I'm gonna call
this what we're gonna call medical marijuana. Uh. Um. And
by the way, on email, I've been answering more and
more lately because I've had more time. UM. But still,
if you write in and I don't answer, we have
read it, I promise. And if you have sent in
just a simple suggestion for a show, we log those. Um.
(32:53):
But you may not get the email back on something
like that. So just I don't want anyone to feel
bad if think emailed like we didn't respond. You're a valued,
valued member of our fan base. Okay, medical marijuana. Uh.
Your show on m m J is what some people
have been calling at. Realize that I always think it's
(33:13):
like Key Martin and you or something like and John. Uh.
It reminded me of a funny story I can share.
During the early eighties, my father had a rare cancer. Um.
It's even rare these days from the surprise my doctors
have when I give my medical history. At one point,
my dad's doctor suggested he tried marijuana to help with
(33:33):
the chemo sickness. Um. Of course, there was no way
to prescribe it back then. You had to get it
on your own. My parents started asking around to see
whose kids could get some trustworthy stuff. With no luck
where we lived, my mom turned to a relative who
lived in another state. So clearly like the stoner cousin,
like two states over, Um, she could get it, but
(33:54):
I don't know the details how. Yeah. The next problem
was how to get it to us. Um. She often
flew to visit every few months, but it was a
pray to putting it in her luggage or mailing it,
even though everybody used to do that back then. I
bet um. So one of her co workers had an idea.
They worked in a doctor's office and decided she would
hide it between her breasts and bandage her as if
(34:17):
she had recently had breast surgery. She was sent with
the note saying under no circumstances, with the bandages to
be removed. They thought that if she was hassled the airport,
a note would get her out of trouble. They did
this actually a few times. It never got caught. Oh
my god, I an't that crazy. As it turns out,
my father couldn't smoke the stuff. It made him sicker. Um,
Oh my god, I know. So he decided to brew
(34:40):
it in tea, and I'm sure there was a little
h baked snack put in his lunch bag every now
and then. Unfortunately, my father passed away in when I
was sixteen. I wasn't completely involved in all this other stuff.
The stories were retold later, but there are a lot
of hijinks going on in the house over those years,
so this is totally plausible. I remember vividly the little
(35:03):
t ball sitting in the sink when I washed the
dishes every night, asking can I clean the thing? And
I would get a resounding no from about five people
in the house at the same time. So that is
from Cindy, and uh no, that's anybody. But she asked
her if I could read this, and she said yes,
and then she wrote me back and said, you know,
I ended up talking to my mom about this and
(35:25):
we all had a good laugh all over again, you know,
and remember my father Blondly she said her mom ended
up smoking some for her anxiety. So you should probably
wipe your hard drive clean of that email lest somebody
sure the FEDS come in a compassed at your computer. Yeah,
it's it's serious though. Um. Yeah, if you have like
(35:48):
a wacky family history story, those are awesome, don't we all?
That's that's pretty wacky though, man. Yeah, It's like little
Miss Sunshine wacky. I haven't seen it, I just know
of it. It's funny. Um, we want to hear it,
so tweet to us at s y s K podcast,
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, or email
(36:08):
at Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff works
dot com. H brought to you by the reinvented two
(36:29):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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