A failed superglue experiment became one of the world's best-selling office products

In 1968, 3M chemist Spencer Silver was trying to invent a super-strong adhesive and instead made one that was oddly weak: it stuck to surfaces but peeled away cleanly, leaving no residue. Nobody at 3M knew what to do with a glue that didn't really stick, until colleague Arthur Fry used it to keep bookmarks from falling out of his choir hymnal. That idea became the Post-it Note.

— Spencer Silver; Arthur Fry, Post-it Note — 3M; adhesive invented 1968, product launched 1980