The practice of gyrating with hoops made of grapevines originated in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
The name hula, however, was not used until the 1700s, when British and American missionaries returned home with tales of island hoop-dancers.
The modern plastic Hula-Hoop was developed in the 1950s by Richard P. Knerr and Arthur K. (“Spud”) Melvin, owners of the Wham-0 Manufacturing Company in California.
It retailed for $1.98 when the Hula-Hoop craze hit in 1958.
The first toothbrush with bristles was developed in China in 1498. Bristles were taken from hogs at first, and later from horses and even badgers. Not until 1938 were nylon bristles, more sanitary and less dangerous, developed by Du Pont.
Frusen Gladje means “frozen delight” in Swedish. Founded in 1980 by Richard Smith, Frusen Glädjé was a company that made ice cream in the United States. The name was intentionally Swedish sounding. As of this writing, Frusen Gladje does not exist anymore and has disappeared.
There are nine nuts per ounce in each box of Cracker Jack, a smaller proportion than in the original 1893 box. But there is a prize, and that didn’t become part of the package until 1913.
There was a woman who acted as Aunt Jemima Nancy Green, of Montgomery County, Kentucky. This cook for a judge’s family in Chicago was lured by executives of the Davis Milling Company to promote the pancake mix at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. She had served 1 million pancakes by the time the fair…
McDonald’s uses about 560 million pounds of hamburger beef each year. This is assuming that the average hamburger weighs 3 ounces. Actually 1.6 ounces for the hamburger, 4 ounces for the quarter-pounder, and that the average quantity sold annually is 3 billion burgers.
Pockets did not come into fashion until the end of the sixteenth century. Before that time, men carried their keys and money in pieces of cloth attached to their clothing. The first pocket was an open-side seam in which men placed their pouch of personal items. Eventually the pocket became a permanent part of the…