3. Velcro
If you spend much time hiking outside, you’ve probably come home covered in burdock burrs at some point. These annoying blobs stick to things like clothes and hair. In 1941 a man named George de Mestro brought some home as a souvenir from his hunting trip. He noticed how they clung to his closing and his dog’s fur and this intrigued him.
Studying one under a microscope he observed it had tiny microscopic simple hooks that allowed it to loops of his socks and his dog’s fur. This was Mestro’s light bulb moment and he spent years doing research and testing hooks and loops of many different materials. Eventually he came up with a perfect combination you now know as Velcro.
