When first presented with the like button (then dubbed “the awesome button”) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a simple response: “No.” He worried that a quick thumbs up or down would discourage more meaningful online interaction. Eventually, his team changed his mind and transformed the world.

The Cubicle was originally designed to set workers free. A futuristic designer named Robert Propst dreamed up “The Action Office” as a groovy 1960s workplace utopia that would unleash the modern knowledge worker’s vast untapped potential. This is how it all went so wrong.

Barcodes have radically changed global commerce, helping fuel the rise of everything from massive companies like Walmart to world powers like China. And it all started with a man daydreaming on a beach in 1949.

Florida wasn’t always the Sunshine State. In the 1920s, an army of real estate boosters set out to redefine Florida from an economic backwater to a ritzy vacation destination, sparking a land boom–and bust–the likes of which America had never seen before.

In 1856, a chemistry student accidentally created a strange substance with a rich purple hue -- the world’s first synthetic dye. In just a few years, ‘Mauve’ would take over the fashion industry, make food look more appetizing, and enable stunning advances in medicine.

In 1841 on the small island of Réunion, a 12-year-old slave did something no one had done before; artificially pollinate the vanilla plant. The vanilla bean took the world by storm, sparking the artificial flavor revolution and forever changing how we eat.