10 Innovations in Winemaking

Winemaking is an 8,000-year-old tradition, and the first wines tasted ... well, terrible. People added ash, resin and even lead to "enhance" the flavor. Luckily, most wines today are pretty darn tasty on their own, thanks to modern fermentation techniques and innovations in packaging that help your wine stay fresher longer, and you certainly don't have to worry that a wine-maker used lead to improve his product's flavor!
We've also seen a big shift in where we produce wine. Once considered a hoity-toity European beverage, wine is made and drunk all over the world, and you're as likely to find a decent glass of red at your neighborhood pizza joint as at a fancy French restaurant.
Winemakers have also gotten more conscious of their environmental impacts. Since a good wine starts with the grape, and good grapes start with good soil, the wine industry has stayed on the cutting edge of sustainable agriculture. Any vintner worth his salt knows that protecting the environment is more than just good for the planet -- it's good for his wines.
With such a long history, there have been lots of innovations through the centuries, from how winemakers grow grapes to how they market those bottles. Let's look at 10 of them.

10 Accidental Inventions You Won't Believe

In an era of constant innovation and discovery, we may not realize that most inventions take years -- even decades -- to develop. Although some breakthroughs take a lifetime of dedication, the curious mind needn't worry.

As history shows us, people have crafted new inventions and stumbled upon discoveries by accident. To agree with Nobel prize-winning biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi: "A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind".
And a prepared mind is usually what it takes. As we learn about 10 accidental inventions and discoveries, remember that some were serendipitous, meaning they were stumbled upon by chance, whereas others occurred while the inventors were trying to discover something else. Take the Slinky, Silly Putty and Play-Doh, for instance. The inventors of these childhood amusements discovered them by chance while trying to discover or invent other things. Such accidental discoveries aren't that rare, actually.
In this article, we'll focus on some of the more unusual accidental discoveries, or ones that will leave you scratching your head in disbelief. These stories show that sometimes it takes a bit of luck to discover the next big thing.
So which inventions and discoveries happened by accident? Read on to learn more.

10 Future Inventions Everyone's Been Waiting For

We get it. You feel like all the science fiction of yesteryear promised you a future of flying cars and hoverboards, and none of it has come to pass. Sure, we have Segways and iPads, but it's small consolation when you wake up every day to a world without "Blade Runner" skylines. But these are only 1980s visions of the future. Back in the '50s and '60s, our expectations for the 21st century were even loftier. With science by our side, nothing seemed out of the question.
Just consider "Magic Highway USA." With an hour's worth of stunning animation, this May 1958 episode of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" awed television audiences with depictions of automated global highways, underwater road systems and antigravity cars.

A year earlier, Disney's "Mars and Beyond" showed viewers what humanity's future on Mars might entail and even featured segments with famed German-American rocket scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun. It all seemed possible -- and much of it still is.
In this article we'll look at 10 future inventions we've been waiting for all our lives. Which ones are just around the corner, and which ones are mere relics of our post-World War II dreams?