The Word SERENDIPITY on This Day in History

This Day in History: Sir Horace Walpole coined the word "serendipity" in a letter to a friend on this day (January 28) in 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a lost painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of." 

The word has been exported into many other languages, with the general meaning of "unexpected discovery" or "fortunate chance".

The term "serendipity" is often applied to inventions made by chance rather than intent. Andrew Smith, editor of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, has speculated that most everyday products had serendipitous roots, with many early ones related to animals. The origin of cheese, for example, possibly originated in the nomad practice of storing milk in the stomach of a dead camel that was attached to the saddle of a live one, thereby mixing rennet from the stomach with the milk stored within.

Other examples of serendipity in inventions include:

The Post-It Note, which emerged after 3M scientist Spencer Silver produced a weak adhesive, and a colleague used it to keep bookmarks in place on a church hymnal.

Silly Putty, which came from a failed attempt at synthetic rubber.

The use of sensors to prevent automobile air bags from killing children, which came from a chair developed by the MIT Media Lab for a Penn and Teller magic show.

The microwave oven. Raytheon scientist Percy Spencer first patented the idea behind it after noticing that emissions from radar equipment had melted the candy in his pocket.

The Velcro hook-and-loop fastener. George de Mestral came up with the idea after a bird hunting trip when he viewed cockleburs stuck to his pants under a microscope and saw that each burr was covered with tiny hooks.

The Popsicle, whose origins go back to San Francisco where Frank Epperson, age 11, accidentally left a mix of water and soda powder outside to freeze overnight.

Polymer teflon, which Roy J. Plunkett observed forming a white mass inside a pressure bottle during an effort to make a new CFCs refrigerant.

The antibiotic penicillin, which was discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming after returning from a vacation to find that a Petri dish containing staphylococcus culture had been infected by a Penicillium mold, and no bacteria grew near it.

The effect on humans of the psychedelic lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was discovered by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1943, after unintentionally ingesting an unknown amount, possibly absorbing it through his skin.

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