Accidents That Turned Out Great

When disaster strikes, we usually expect the final outcome to be pretty nasty. But, if those cases of unexpectedly amazing outcomes are anything to go by, we may have reason to be a little more optimistic when life deals us a bad hand! Get ready to have your faith in the universe restored, as we explore some terrible accidents that turned out just great.

Viggo Mortensen Broke His Toe In The Two Towers

A lead actor getting injured while filming a movie can cost a production company millions, so usually, every precaution is taken to avoid that scenario. But it’s less easy to factor in the chances of an actor getting hurt during a seemingly harmless scene.

But that’s precisely what happened to actor Viggo Mortensen while filming The Two Towers, the second installment in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Mortensen was filming a scene in which his character, the heroic Aragorn, is led to believe fellow adventurers Merry and Pippin had been captured. In a moment of total despair, Aragorn kicks a helmet, screams and falls to his knees.

On the day of shooting, director Peter Jackson had shot the moment four times, and each take had been better than the last. So, he asked Mortensen to give it one last try. He did, and Jackson got the take he wanted.

Viggo Mortensen breaks his toe in LOTR by ronan255

But it turned out that final scream was so gut-wrenchingly convincing because Mortensen actually broken his toes kicking the metal helmet! Luckily, he stayed in character and the unfortunate incident helped create a truly memorable scene.

Accidental Invention Of The Potato Chips

Chips, crisps, vague, non-specified potato snacks whatever you call them, there’s no denying potato chips are one of the most popular junk foods on the planet. But their origin story is one of passive-aggression backfiring in a totally hilarious way.

While working at a New York restaurant in the late 1800s, the appropriately named chef George Crum found himself with a difficult customer. Crum became frustrated when the patron repeatedly sent back his French fries, complaining they were soggy. Crum, salty that his culinary skills had been called into question, decided to teach the customer a lesson. Crum sliced the next batch of potato chips super thin, fried them to a crisp then doused the thin strips in salt.

To his surprise, the complaining customer actually loved the result of Crum’s passive-aggressiveness! That moment would go down in folkloric history as the first serving of potato chips. Though the actual origins may actually have occurred a little before Crum’s invention in another part of the US, Crum’s story is the best of the bag.

Though potato chips are no longer sold freshly made, they can be found in stores on almost every street in the civilized world. That may well be the only story where offending the person that handles your food actually turned out great for customer as well as the rest of humanity. Well, snack-wise anyway.

Champagne Was Created By Accident

In the 16th century, a French Benedictine Monk named Dom Pierre Perignon spent his time off making delicious wine in the Champagne region of France. For winemakers in that period, the lack of ability to regulate the temperature of fermenting wine, besides storing it in a cold basement presented a number of issues.

While making a batch of wine, a cold spell of weather could halt the fermentation process, and only when the weather warmed up again could the fermentation continue. But with that stop-start change, wine bottles would often fill with bubbles of carbon dioxide. Often, that could lead wines to literally explode out of their bottles, starting a devastating chain reaction with the other surrounding bottles.

Dom Perignon was no stranger to that, and knew that spotting bubbles often led winemakers of his time to discard entire batches. Yes, when Perignon spotted bubbles in a batch that survived one particular year’s stop-start temperature changes explosion-free, his reaction was a little different.

As legend has it, he tasted his sparkling, tingly creation and called out to his fellow monks, “come quickly! I am drinking the stars!” While a little-known English winemaker had successfully produced sparkling wine 3 decades earlier, Perignon produced the first of what is now officially recognized as champagne.

The beverage by definition now has to be specifically produced in the Champagne region to qualify. Dom Perignon spent the rest of his life perfecting the formula, which soon became a global sensation, and the Dom Perignon brand was later named in his honor. That is one accident worth drinking to.

TransferWise Invention

When an Estonian called Taavet Hinrikus was working in London as a management consultant in 2008, he was initially very pleased to receive a bonus of £10,000. Interests rates were higher in Estonia so he decided to transfer the money from his UK current account to his Estonian savings account to earn more from the cash.

He made the transfer, but noticed a week later it was considerably less than expected. The UK bank had given him an awful exchange rate, taking a cut for themselves as is the common practice, and he’d lost £500 because of it. He angrily vowed to come up with a way of transferring money overseas that removed banks from the equation.

So, beginning with a network of friends who transferred money informally between themselves, he helped form a company called TransferWise, which shared the service with the world. Now, the company is transforming financial services globally within local accounts with no need to move the money across borders, and it all started with a single annoying dilemma. Maybe banks should try to annoy Estonians more often.

HeLa Cells

In 1951, medical history was unexpectedly made when the cervical cancer cells of an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks were collected by her doctor. When examined by researchers, they realized that Henrietta’s were the first ever human cells that could survive and self-replicate indefinitely outside of the body. That development revolutionized medical research, as it allowed for consistent testing of treatments for things like cancer.

Sadly, Henrietta died shortly after, never able to see how much good had come from her own body. While many scientists built careers and fortunes off of HeLa cells, neither Henrietta nor her family were asked for permission to use the cells. Worse, Henrietta’s family weren’t even told about them until the 70s, and they never saw a penny of the many fortunes the cells amassed.

The only involvement Henrietta Lacks had was that the revolutionary HeLa cells were named after her. But despite the unfortunate path the story took, HeLa cells have saved countless lives. They even helped in developing treatments for the very cancer Henrietta died of, among many other developments. The moral of the story is, if you’re gonna breach someone’s privacy, do it for the benefit of humanity.

Chris Pratt’s Improvised Orb Drop in Guardians of the Galaxy

Despite meticulous planning, in projects as huge and complex as Marvel movies, mistakes are bound to happen. Normally, such mistakes don’t make the final edit, but that was not the case in a particular scene in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy. In the scene, Chris Pratt’s character, Star Lord, offers a metal orb to the Collector, unaware of its true power.

But during filming, while Pratt whose clumsiness is as famous as he is, was handing over the orb, he accidently dropped it. He quickly stumbled to catch the orb and offered it up like nothing happened, adding humor to an otherwise serious scene. The blooper suited Pratt’s character so much, director James Gunn decided to leave the take in the final cut.

The Collector Infinity Stones / Guardians of the Galaxy by cool clips

The Accidental Discovery Of Nitrous Oxide (N2O)

When Nitrous oxide was first synthesized in 1772 it was initially seen as little more than an amusing party trick that could induce short-lived euphoria and giggles. But in 1844, an English dentist named Horace Wells came upon the idea of using laughing gas for tooth extractions and surgeries.

The idea came after he witnessed a man, intoxicated by the gas, receive a nasty gash on his leg after banging it on a bench. The man didn’t feel a thing and once he sobered up moments later didn’t even notice his abrasions until they were pointed out.

The next day, Wells asked a colleague pull out a rotten tooth from his mouth while he was knocked out by the gas. Feeling no pain, Wells knew he was onto something.

Unfortunately, Wells’ attempts to mass-market the gas were marred by unsuccessful demonstrations and he became something of a laughing-stock amongst his peers. Despite the difficulties Wells faced, he got the last laugh, albeit posthumously as nitrous oxide eventually became one of the most widely-used general anesthetics in the world. And to think, it all started with a giggling man and his grazed knee.

The Accidental Invention Of The Microwave

In 1945, American engineer Percy Spender was working on a project for radar company Raytheon. While testing the radar equipment, which used high-frequency electromagnetic waves, he noticed the chocolate bar in his back pocket had melted. He realized that the microwaves emitted by the radar equipment were responsible for his pants’ suspicious-looking brown patch, and started experimenting, cooking items such as eggs and popcorn kernels.

He adapted his discovery by using a metal box to trap and concentrate the microwaves, to even greater success. After Spender successfully cooked many items, Raytheon filed a patent for the process. And just like that, every chocolate lover’s worst nightmare changed home-cooking forever. Needless to say, it’s a much better outcome than if Spender had had aluminum foil in his pocket.

Hyundai’s Invincible Car

In 2012, strong winds led to an empty shipping container on a truck falling onto a Hyundai Elantra in South Korea. Despite that seeming like a recipe for a gruesome end, no one was injured, and the Elantra held up impressively well. Strangely enough, the container had Hyundai mud flaps, making the whole scene seem like some bizarre, twisted advertisement!

While that was not actually the case, the narrowly-avoided disaster still made for some fantastic PR. Hyundai proudly posted the image on its official Facebook page, and you can't blame them. It quickly went viral, with many people commenting on how strong the car was. After all, nothing says structural integrity like a car capable of bench-pressing a shipping container.

If you were amazed at these accidents that turned out great, you might want to read about accidental inventions that you can't imagine your life without. Thanks for reading!