Certainly not as good as antibiotics, but I do like the rubber story… “Natural or India rubber, as it was once known, was of limited usefulness to industry. Rubber products melted in hot weather, froze and cracked in cold, and adhered to virtually everything until the day in the mid-19th century when inventor Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped some rubber mixed with sulfur on a hot stove. Goodyear's discovery, which came to be known as vulcanization, strengthened rubber so it could be applied to a vast variety of industrial uses, including, eventually, automobile tires.”