Inventions
A few British inventions to add to the list are the vending machine, caterpillar tracks, the artifical hand, the heavier than air flying machine and golf.
One false discovery attribution seems to be Edward Jenner's smallpox innoculation. He was preceeded in the endeavour by Benjamin Jesty of Dorset (whose work was later acknowledged by some award), by the Welsh doctor Wright, by the American Cotton Mather, by attempts at perfecting the method in Germany, Denmark, Holland, Italy and France, plus, naturally, the Chinese, who were already trying this method of averting smallpox in the millenum BEFORE the last.
Jesty and Wright had also both commented that it was well known by country people that if cowpox could be induced in an individual that person would generally become immune to smallpox. Jenner just seems to have picked up the ball and run with it.
You can say that inventions come along in their proper time, but I find it interesting how some original ideas and unexpected inventions arose at precisely the same time in places far apart, whose inventors had proceeded upon their own lines of enquiry in isolation and were unaware of other investigations - the 'theory of evolution' from Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin is one, Walsharts and Heusinger steam locomotive valve gear is another, the theory of heredity is another.