What Happens When Chemists Don't Wash Their Hands

Serendipitous discoveries tend to happen in unexpected ways. But the stories of the serendipitous discoveries of three different artificial sweeteners are, in their basic components, identical. All three were discovered when a scientist put his hand to his mouth and tasted something unusually sweet.

Saccharin, 1897, Johns Hopkins University

One night, Constantine Fahlberg came home from the lab, picked up a piece of bread, and took a bite. It was sweet—much sweeter than sugar—and he realized he was eating bread dusted with some chemical he'd made that day at work.

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