Happy Accident: The Birth of Teflon

In 1938, 27-year-old chemist Roy J. Plunkett made one of the most serendipitous discoveries in modern materials science. While working at DuPont’s Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, New Jersey, Plunkett was experimenting with tetrafluoroethylene gas (TFE), hoping to create a new refrigerant in the Freon family. But when he opened a pressurized cylinder, he found that the gas had polymerized into a waxy white solid. That substance—polytetrafluoroethylene, later branded as Teflon®—was slippery, chemically inert, and heat-resistant. It would revolutionize everything from cookware to aerospace.

Born on June 26, 1910, in New Carlisle, Ohio, Plunkett’s path to discovery was paved with academic rigor. He earned a B.A. in chemistry from Manchester College in 1932, followed by a master’s and Ph.D. from Ohio State University by 1936, where he studied carbohydrate oxidation. That same year, he joined DuPont.

Plunkett’s invention wasn’t immediately commercialized. It took over a decade before Teflon found its first major application—coating gaskets and valves in the Manhattan Project, due to its resistance to corrosive uranium hexafluoride gas. By 1949, it was being used in consumer products, most famously in non-stick cookware.

In 1951, Plunkett received the John Scott Medal from the city of Philadelphia, an honor reserved for inventions that promote the “comfort, welfare, and happiness of humankind.” Guests at the ceremony received Teflon-coated muffin tins—a poetic nod to the material’s domestic future.

He continued to rise within DuPont, eventually supervising the production of tetraethyl lead and holding key leadership roles. His contributions earned him induction into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 1973 and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1985.

Plunkett passed away from cancer on May 12, 1994, at his home in Corpus Christi, Texas, at the age of 83. His legacy lives on in every frictionless surface, every heat-resistant seal, and every pan that lets an egg slide free.

The Last Breath of Mercy Brown

*A true tale of grief, fear, and fire in 1892 Rhode Island*

They called it *consumption*, because it consumed you—slowly, cruelly. First the cough, then the fever, then the wasting. One by one, the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island, faded like breath on a windowpane.

First went Mary Eliza, the mother. Then Mary Olive, the eldest daughter. Then Edwin, the son, left for Colorado in a desperate bid for dry air and healing. And then, in the bitter winter of 1892, Mercy Lena Brown—just 19—died.

But Edwin returned home still sick. Pale. Weak. Dying.

The townsfolk whispered. Too many Browns had died. Too quickly. Too completely. And Edwin—he was being *drained*. Not by disease, they said. By the dead.

The villagers remembered old tales. From Europe, yes—but also from their own soil. In Vermont, they’d burned the heart of Frederick Ransom. In Connecticut, they’d dismembered corpses. In rural New England, the dead were not always dead. Sometimes, they fed.

So they came for Mercy.

Two months after her burial, they exhumed her grave. Her body, unlike the others, was strangely preserved. Her hair had grown. Her nails, too. And—most damning of all—there was blood in her heart.

They removed it.

They burned it.

They mixed the ashes with water and gave it to Edwin to drink.

This was not a horror story. This was *medicine*, by 19th-century standards. A folk cure. A desperate act of love and fear.

Edwin died anyway.

But Mercy lived on—in legend. Her grave, in Chestnut Hill Cemetery, still draws visitors. Some leave vampire teeth. Others leave flowers. All leave wondering: how could grief twist into ritual? How could love become exhumation?

And what if the dead *do* whisper?