Japanese monks and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years. They accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset

Was going to say this myself and then saw your comment. Totally agree. ‘Accidently’ practically implies that the record keeping itself only happened because some pencils happened to fall on paper. They did exactly what they intended to and used it for their own purpose. It just turned out to have a different purpose, too.