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5) Turkish Taffy

Via/ Flickr

This sticky, wonderful stuff was created by accident in 1912 when candymaker Herman Herer (AKA Pop) was making a batch of marshmallow candy and accidentally added too many egg whites to the mixture. Instead of throwing it out, he realized he was on to something good. Pop’s business was sold first to M. Schwarz and Sons and then to Bonomo. Once sold by weight in Woolworth’s stores, the personal-size taffies we love today would have never been around if Pop hadn’t made that crucial (and delicious) mistake over a century ago.

4) Potato Chips

Via/ Flickr

The Saratoga Springs restaurant of Moon’s Lake House in the 1850s has been the source of the hotly debated origin story of potato chips. Legend has it that the chef, George Crum, was inadvertently pushed into creating the potato chip by a demanding customer who kept sending his French fried potatoes back and insisting they be cut thinner each time.

Other theories cite an 1822 English cookbook which contains within it a recipe for shaved potatoes fried in fat, or the idea that Crum’s boss actually invented the chips. Any way you slice it, though, potato chips are now a staple of the snack industry. Potato chips in the U.S. were known as Saratoga chips up until the 1950s, as seen in the photo above of a factory in Oregon.

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