Where the Wild Things Are was supposed to have been about horses—but the illustrator couldn't draw them.
When a piece of bread is toasted, it's called the "Maillard reaction."
A cow-bison hybrid is called a "beefalo."
Commercial flights were allowed to fly any course to their destination and would often detour over points of interest. This ended in 1956 when two planes crashed mid-flight over the Grand Canyon.