Chanel Number 5 got its name not because it was the fifth formulation of the perfume mixture.
Coco Chanel considered five a lucky number, and when she introduced the perfume in 1921, she did so on the fifth day of May, the fifth month.
She called the fragrance Chanel N°5.
The company that eventually bore the name Shell Oil Company was originally a novelty shop in London called The Shell Shop. In the mid-1800s, shop owner Marcus Samuel became successful selling boxes of pretty seashells. Imported shells also brought in money, and his international trade business really expanded when he found he could also export…
Robert Johnson, a pharmacist from Brooklyn, New York, and partner in a Brooklyn pharmaceutical supply firm invented the Band-Aid. They believed that individually sealed sterile bandages could drastically reduce the rate of hospital infections, which in some cases ran to 90 percent. By the mid-1800s, he and his brothers formed a pharmaceutical company that produced…
New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacobs patented the first brassiere in 1914. She had devised it for her own use as an alternative to the corset, which showed under her sheer gown. The first bra was made from ribbon and handkerchiefs.
This 1903 creation Sanka is a contraction of the French phrase sans cafeine. The first decaffeinated coffee arrived in America by accident that year: A shipload of coffee coming from Europe to coffee importer Dr. Ludwig Roselius became waterlogged, and thus decaffeinated.
LSMFT means Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. It was the creation of George Washington Hill, son of Buck Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company. The slogan, introduced in the early 1940s, became so popular that by 1944 its acronym, L.S.M.F.T., was printed on the bottom of every Lucky Strike package.
The safety pin as we know it today was not produced until 1849, when American inventor Walter Hunt patented the first modern design. Precursors were developed in Europe about 3,000 years ago and became the standard device for fastening clothes. In the sixth century B.c., Greek and Roman women used a fibula, a pin with…