Sort of akin to the thread title, I've always been intrigued by 'standards' that got set the way they did for perfectly good reasons, but remain long after those reasons have gone away, because they're integral parts of systems, whose operations are now hampered - for good. Two examples being the QWERTY keyboard and kitchen worksurfaces.
The former was designed the way it was to avoid typewriter keys locking together, and is probably now set in place for ever, since the other part of 'the system' - human operators - learns on it. (Attempts to introduce an alternative, the Dvorak keyboard, have proved unsuccessful, though "Because the Dvorak layout concentrates the vast majority of key strokes to the home [ie middle] row, the Dvorak layout uses about 63% of the finger motion required by QWERTY, which is claimed to make the keyboard more ergonomic.")
The latter was set at its current height to suit the American housewife of the '50s, meaning it's now several inches below optimum for most (now significantly taller) users, but will probably stay at that height from here on in, because the other part of 'the system' - the white goods designed to fit under it - have heights dictated by it.
In short, 'things' designed not by 'an idiot', but by perfectly sensible people for perfectly valid reasons, have bequeathed us systems which are inherently dysfunctional, and pretty much guaranteed to remain so.