"Perhaps one of the best-known stories of a new venture founded on a contingency is Silly Putty. The substance was actually the result of a failed experiment to create synthetic rubber during World War II in General Electric's New Haven laboratory.
General Electric bounced the idea around for years in search of a practical use, but it wasn't until 1949 that Peter Hodgson, an unemployed advertising agent, encountered the compound as part of the entertainment at a party. Finding the stretchy material was an accident, but Hodgson did what he could with that contingent event."