Ascanio Sobrero added glycerol to nitric and sulfuric acids in 1847, synthesizing nitroglycerin. An injury from an explosion years earlier contributed to his conclusion that his invention was too dangerous for practical use.

In the 1860s, Alfred Nobel combined nitroglycerin with kieselguhr, a porous soil rich in shells of diatoms, creating dynamite, a less dangerous paste that could be kneaded into shapes and used for blasting.

Nobel’s commercial success troubled Sobrero. “When I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerin explosions . . .” Sobrero lamented, “I am almost ashamed to admit to be its discoverer.”

Nobel’s factory workers suffered headaches that disappeared at home and weekend chest pains that subsided when they returned to work on Monday. Both maladies, it would later be learned, resulted from the nitroglycerin adsorbed through their skin and mucous membranes.

“It is ironical,” Nobel later wrote, after suffering chest pains himself, “that I am now ordered by my physician to eat nitroglycerin.” Before his death in 1896, Nobel committed his explosives fortune to the establishment of the Nobel Prize.

Doctors still administer nitroglycerin through the skin and mucous membranes for cardiac pain, and it still causes headaches.

In 1977, Ferid Murad demonstrated nitroglycerin dilated coronary arteries via nitric oxide (not to be confused with nitrous oxide, AKA laughing gas). Robert Furchgott and Louis Ignarro further elucidated critical roles of nitric oxide in the body.

Irony and serendipity came full circle in 1998 when Murad, Furchgott, and Ignarro received the Nobel Prize for discovering the extraordinary roles of nitric oxide in our bodies.

As it turned out, Ascanio Sobrero’s discovery helped far more people than it harmed.

We don’t often see the end from the beginning. Don’t get discouraged. Some miracles take time and unexpected collaboration.