In 1856, an 18-year-old by the name of <a href="https://cnn.com/style/article/perkin-mauve-purple/index.html">William Henry Perkin</a> was tasked with finding a cheap way to produce quinine by his chemistry teacher. Quinine was used at the time to treat malaria, but Perkin's creation, made from coal tar, did no such thing. What he'd made was a black goo, that when washed away left a vivid purple color. It transferred to cloth well, and costly and often messy natural dyes were supplanted by this happy accident. Perkin named it "Tyrian purple" before later settling for mauve.