Saccharin

Constantin Fahlberg's sweet dinner roll, Johns Hopkins University, 1878 Fahlberg was working in Ira Remsen's Baltimore lab and had spilled an experimental compound over his hands. At dinner he picked up a roll and bit into a remarkably sweet crust, then ran back to the lab and tasted everything on his workbench to find the source. It is a lesson in bad lab hygiene as much as discovery. Remsen and Fahlberg published the synthesis jointly in February 1879, but in 1886 Fahlberg patented it claiming to be the sole discoverer, and Remsen protested. Saccharin, hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, became the first artificial sweetener and still sits in diet sodas and tabletop packets.