Purple to be precise MAUVE PURPLE, the the color of royalty at least in the 18s. Wont believe but back then this purple dye was more expensive than the gold. Let the royals belong from anywhere whether Europe, Egypt or Greek the color they would wear was purple. Queen Elizabeth had banned purple for locals to wear. The color of the crown on which the Kohinoor diamond is, is also PURPLE. But in 1856's something was going to happen that would change this rule. Cause in 1856 a 19 years chemistry student happen to make a big mistake in his experiment, but this mistake changed the concept of “purple is for royals only” now this color was available for everyone and the biggest thing to talk about his mistake invention is, it made purple the only color that could save people's life. BUT HOW??

Let's go the year 1856 and place British India problem malaria. British army on their tropes in India every year had to spend 135 pounds that is 117 crore in rupees only for the medication of malaria. The medicine is known as quinine the plant from which it is made is only found in South Africa and because England, Holland, Italy, Russia everywhere malaria was rampant in 1856 resulted the price of this medicine to skyrocket that's why England's every chemist kept every other wok at a side and indulged themselves in creating synthetic quinine but this story isn't about quinine either malaria this story is about a mistake. The name of this chemist is William Henry Perkin. Just like other chemist in London, finding ways of creating quinine. This day just as regular, in the process of trying, he mixed some substances which interacted differently giving a tar like black substance, he tried to throw this in the basin but it was not coming out of the beaker, he thought of adding alcohol so the substance could separate but as soon as a drop of alcohol was added the tar kike substance turned into a beautiful shade of purple. This made William happy as if he won some lottery and thought to himself “now I'm going to be rich” BUT wait a second how can someone become rich with purple color??

Thinking about this in today's world is a bit weird as we can just go up to some stationary and but this ‘purple color’ nothing special about it, right? Yes right! but this story is about the year 1856 and at that time purple was as expensive as gold why cause making purple was disgusting and also difficult. That time purple could be made from only one thing, that is from snails. To make purple you had to take each snail then crush it, its gland then secreted a blue color liquid that after getting oxidized in the air would turn in to purple. But the problem here was the miserable smell after crushing, it used to be so bad that the ones making purple ‘purple maker’ faced difficulty in breathing. Also to make just a small amount of purple it required nearly 1000s of snails daily after which it takes ten days to ferment the liquid from the gland. As the process is a lot time consuming and smelly which made purple expensive.

Now this purple made by William was everywhere not just the gowns and crowns of royals but now the locals could wear purple too. It was the color of the season. William took a quick move and patent his dye which made him a millionaire at the age of 21 and retired at the age of 36 like a boss. But before his retirement his ‘mistake invention’ was going to change the world again. The biology world, turns out this dye was very helpful to see the cells under the microscope. A scientist Paul Ehrlich started staining the cells. Today if we know how chromosome looks is because of this. The treatment of cancer, chemotherapy also started by using this dye initially which got developed by various scientists.

So, you could say William wasn't able to find a cure for malaria but indirectly he saved many lives because of his ‘mistake invention’ Giving it a second thought this should not be called a mistake,  someone else might have not even noticed the color. In conclusion everything happens for a reason its just one has to notice