Non-stick pans
Roy Plunkett was a young American chemist employed by Pont de Nemours & Company in New Jersey. In April 1938, while experimenting with a refrigerant, he found a pipe filled with frozen tetrafluoroethylene and noted that no gas had escaped. Intrigued, he shook the tube and found small white fragments that had not stuck to the surface. On the walls of the pipe, the tetrafluoroethylene had polymerized to create what we now know as Teflon.