Weetabix are a post-accident discovery, but they don't always come how Nick likes them (with cold milk and a sliced banana), sometimes turning up hot with a whole banana laid on top like an anaemic sea creature.
In 1944, Eve is still convinced that Lucy's death was no accident, but the discovery of a letter she wrote to Lucy on the day of her death casts Eve in a new light.
That Loeb was a biochemist, rather than a developmental biologist like Roux, was no accident, since the discovery of cell-free fermentation by Eduard Buchner in 1897 is regarded as both one of the foundations of modern biochemistry and also a major experimental nail in the coffin of vitalism.
An old word is serendipity, "a happy discovery by accident".
I found the pieces both by deliberate effort and by accident, and with each discovery I had to reconfigure the growing whole.
His work on copper plates was not proving very successful when an accident led to his discovery of the possibilities of stone (1796).
"The Other Side of the Mountain," a lightly fictionalized and highly sentimental account of her accident, triumphant rehabilitation and discovery of a new life as a teacher, starred Marilyn Hassett in the lead role and Beau Bridges as her handsome, daredevil fiancé, who is killed in a plane crash.
A happy accident led to its discovery in a municipal storeroom where it had languished for 15 years.
Still, a reviewer pointed out, the accident was still a discovery, too: "The value of a scientific hypothesis is not to be judged by its truth but by the impulse which it gives to the search for truth".
Serendipity is the making of fortunate discoveries by accident, and is one of the cornerstones of scientific progress.
It means the "faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident".
