The stuff was originally intended to be wallpaper cleaner! (I used to eat this as a child)

Invented in 1760.

A list of Benjamin Franklin's inventions reveals a man of many talents and interests. It was the scientist in Ben that brought out the inventor. His natural curiosity about things and the way they work made him try to find ways to make them work better.

Ben had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals.

Invented in 1668.

Invented in 1765.

In the 1920s Clarence Birdseye discovered that if food was flash-frozen under pressure, it would freeze without the formation of ice crystals.

Viscount Charles 'Turnip' Townsend developed this revolutionary concept.

Many people who tried to test the first parachutes died by jumping from high places. One attempt was a parachute hat, but the inventor broke his neck while testing it. The first successful parachute was tested from a hot air balloon in 1797, in France, by Jacques Garnerin.

Joseph Cyril Bamford founded the company that makes these iconic machines in 1945, in a 12ft X 15ft garage in Staffordshire.

The Hungarian brothers, Laszlo and George Biro, made the first ball point pen in 1894. It followed the first workable fountain pen which was invented by L.E. Waterman in 1884.