You probably had to learn the names of all 50 states back in elementary school. Here’s a look into an alternate universe, where you would’ve had to memorize totally different state names. Here’s a look at some rejected options. Deseret After a plan to have a much larger state comprising parts of present-day Nevada, Arizona, […]
A look at life in the not-so-distant (but it sure seems like it!) past. World population: 3.9 billion (2014: about 7.2 billion) Average life expectancy in the U.S.: 71.4 (2014: 78.7) Average annual income: $12,900 (minimum wage: $1.60 per hour) Average cost of a… Television: Movies: Sports: Music: News: Science News: Deaths: Bruce Lee, Bobby […]
THE TUPPERWARE STORY
Today the word Tupperware is a generic term for any plastic food container
with a sealable lid. That’s thanks to two people: Earl Tupper, inventor
of the product that bears his name, and Brownie Wise, who has
been all but erased from the company’s history.BLACK GOLD
In the fall of 1945, a plastics manufacturer named Earl Tupper tried to place an order for plastic resin, one of the key ingredients in plastic, with the Bakelite Corporation. But the material was in short supply, and Bakelite couldn’t fill his order. When Tupper asked if they had anything else for him to work with, the company gave him a black, oily lump of polyethylene slag, a rubbery by-product of the petroleum refining process that collected at the bottom of oil barrels. Bakelite, makers of an early plastic by the same name, couldn’t find a use for the waste product, and neither could the chemical giant DuPont. Both companies had plenty of the stuff lying around. They told Tupper he could have as much as he wanted.Tupper spent months experimenting with different blends of polyethylene—“Poly-T,” as he called it—and molding them at different pressures and temperatures. He eventually came up with a process for forming it into brightly colored cups, bowls, and other household items. A year later he patented the idea that he’s most famous for: the “Tupperware seal,” which provided a spill-proof, airtight seal between Tupperware containers and their lids. (He borrowed the idea from paint-can lids.) Tupper called his first sealable container the “Wonderbowl.”
We just heard today that the great bluegrass singer and true American treasure Hazel Dickens passed away on Friday.
“Hazel Dickens, a West Virginia-born bluegrass singer who was an authentic voice of America’s working class, has died in Washington at 75.
Ms. Dickens grew up in dire poverty in West Virginia’s coal country and developed a raw, keening style of singing that was filled with the pain of her hardscrabble youth. She supported herself in day jobs for many years before she was heard on the soundtrack of the 1976 Oscar-winning documentary about coal mining, ‘Harlan County, U.S.A.’
Her uncompromising songs about coal mining, such as ‘Black Lung’ and ‘They Can’t Keep Us Down,’ became anthems, and she was among the first to sing of the plight of women trying to get by in the working-class world.”
Get your chills ready, and listen to this:
A story to prove that it truly is a small, small world – spacewise and timewise:
• In 2007 we released Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into National Parks.
• On page 107, in an article about Ellis Island, now known as Ellis Island National Monument, we mentioned that the very first person to pass through the then brand new federal immigration station, on January 1, 1892, was a 15-year-old girl from Ireland named Annie Moore.
• Yesterday we received an email from BRI fan Nicole H, who said:
For reasons only the mind-faeries know I just thought of the old drive-in theater that I grew up a short walk through a yard and a field from in Western New York. And lo and behold—I found it on the internet. In several places. There’s even an aeriel photo of the site (at the first link) from 1978. And my house is even in there—who knows, I may have even been standing in the yard at the time! (Click pix to enlarge.)
There was a segment on NPR this morning about the growing number of higher education students defaulting on federal school loans. The numbers are astounding: More than 238,000 students with federal loans are in default. And we’ve all heard the horror stories of students accruing debts that will take a decade—or decades—to pay back. (That’s crazy!)
The New York Times reports that the last of the chorus girls from the one-time American entertainment institution, the Ziegfeld Follies, has died:
“For a quarter century, Florenz Ziegfeld auditioned hundreds of thousands of young women vying to become chorus girls, the Ziegfeld Girls, those lace and chiffon visions of glamour who were as much a part of the Jazz Age as Stutz Bearcats, the Charleston and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In all, from 1907 to 1931, he picked about 3,000, and on Tuesday the last Ziegfeld Girl died. She was Doris Eaton Travis, and she was 106.”
She had quite a story:
Mrs. Travis may have been the youngest Ziegfeld Girl ever, having lied about her age to begin dancing at 14. She was part of a celebrated family of American stage performers known as “the seven little Eatons.” George Gershwin played on her family’s piano, and Charles Lindbergh dropped by for “tea,” Prohibition cocktails.
And she kept on dancing until she was 104, and even appeared at a charity event just two weeks ago.
• Here’s a book that was written about Mrs. Travis in 2006, Century Girl:
Similar in approach to a graphic novel, this biography-in-collage tackles the life of Ziegfeld Follies star Doris Eaton. Each page offers a wild mix of illustrations, doodles, photos and memorabilia from Eaton’s archives, accompanied by handwritten text outlining her fascinating life, which comes across like something out of the musical Gypsy.
• Here’s video of Doris dancing—when she was 104:
While performing an important search for an article one day—okay, I admit it, it was this morning, and I was bored, and I put “pergle” into Google just to see what would happen, you caught me!—I found this blast from the past: Pergl Gas Pump Globes. Remember those?
“Gas globes are spherical glass signs that sat atop gas pumps in the first half of the 20th century, advertising a specific oil company or brand of gasoline. Generally made from a ring of metal with a lens mounted on either side, they were produced in various shapes (like the Shell clamshell) and innumerable designs.
The purpose of gas pump globes was brand identification for drivers at a distance. Lighting wasn’t as good on gas stations as it is today. Sometimes all a motorist could recognize driving by was the gas pump itself lit up, and the globe glowed so they’d know what brand of gas was available. Post World War II, pumps started getting smaller, and by the 1960’s, it was unusual to have a globe.”
Pergl makes reproductions, but there are of course lots of dealers in actual antique globes, and over at OldGas.com, “The Gas Station & Auto Service Collectibles Web Site,” they have a huge gallery of photos of vintage globes.
Today, April 7, marks the 77th anniversary of the beginning of one of the most raucous 24-hour periods in American history. It was on this day in 1933 that Congress officially modified the Volstead Act, better known as the National Prohibition Act, which in 1919 had made it illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport any beverage containing more than .05% alcohol. The modification rose that to 3.2%, and, as the day neared, the breweries around the country that hadn’t been driven out of business in the dry, 14-year period (they survived by making drinks like root beer and ginger ale), readied for what would become one of the wildest national parties in American history:
