Like Columbus, you might discover by accident

The Internet encyclopedia Widipedia, describes Serendipity as "the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely."

Columbus Day, celebrated on October 12, commemorates the discovery of the Americas during one of Christopher Columbus's expedition to the West. He was looking for a naval route to India, but instead found a continent of which the Europeans, Africans, and Asians, knew verey little about. It was a "serendipitous" experience - the accidental discovery of something while looking for something else.

A serendipitous experience is not a rare occasion. Sir Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin while looking for a cure for infections during World War I. William Herschel was looking for comets when he found Uranus. He first identified Uranus as a comet, and suggested it was a planet when he noticed the circularity of its orbit. An engineer working with Canon accidentally put a hot soldering iron on his pen. A few moments later, ink was ejected from the point of the pen which led to the discovery of inkjet printers.

The "low-tack" reusable adhesive was developed by a scientist, Dr. Spencer Silver, at 3M, but did not have much success in promoting it. One of his colleagues, Arthur Fry, was frustrated that his bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal as he sang in the church choir. He came up with the idea of using the adhesive to keep his bookmarks in place. So came into being the Postit notes.

I guess one of the lessons we

can learn is never to become discouraged if something doesn't work out as we had hoped, for a serendipitous event may come out of the failure. We may discover "something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely."