Why getting it wrong can be oh so right

New discoveries are sometimes just happy accidents.

Take the colour mauve, for example. On the search for a new medicine to cure malaria, young William Henry Perkin accidentally discovered that the dirty brown sludge left at the bottom of a beaker had a purplish hue.

Instead of producing quinine, the 18-year-old had just created the world’s first synthetic dye – mauveine, also known as aniline purple, purple aniline, and Perkin’s mallow.

A discovery that d the world forever.

It was the beginning of the first synthetic dye that brought affordable colour to the masses.

Sometimes mistakes can be beneficial.

You just have to look at them in the right light.

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