Mistakes are in the DNA of the U.S.A.: Christopher Columbus was trying to find a westward route from Europe to Asia when he discovered the New World.
Since then, the U.S. has repeatedly proved itself to be the land of luck. Harnessing happenstance has led to inventions that have changed the world—from extending the lives of cardiac patients to overhauling how humans eat. It even gave bored fingers little air bubbles to pop.
“People underestimate how improbable the improbable is,” says Christian Busch, a University of Southern California business-school professor and the author of “The Serendipity Mindset.”
Call it what you will: chances, providence, fluke, good fortune. For 250 years, it hasn’t been Archimedes in a bathtub, but tinkerers in workshops and scientists in labs, embracing—and capitalizing on—their blunders.
Here are 10 U.S. innovations born of mistakes: