Moldy Mary
One day in the summer of 1943, Mary Hunt found a rotting cantaloupe with mold on it that she described as having "a pretty, golden look." She delivered it to the laboratory where it was tested along with others that had been collected. This fungus, however, turned out to be exactly the elusive mold that was sought. It grew well submerged and yielded more than twice the amount of penicillin that the original strain produced.