1 August 1893: Shredded wheat

Henry Perky and William Ford patented a cereal they called shredded wheat. This unappetizing goop was briefly embraced as a cure-all, but most people rarely made it past one bowl of the stuff. Some food historians occasionally make it for the curious, but it remains a curiosity of the 19th century.

Henry D. Perky and William H. Ford of Watertown, New York actually patented a machine that made fine wheat filaments for shredded-wheat biscuits:

US Patent 502,378: machine for the preparation of cereals for food. Click for details

In the real world, shredded wheat is still going strong, more than a century after its invention.