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.
No, the Gerber baby is not a painting of the young Humphrey Bogart. The now famous portrait was of a baby girl named Ann Turner and was sketched by artist Dorothy Hope Smith in 1928.
Originally San Francisco tailor Levi Strauss made jeans from canvas. But in the early 1860s, he started using a softer fabric imported from Nimes, France. Known in French as serge de Nimes, the material was called denim in the United States.
In 1942, the theoretical physicist John V. Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry built the first computer that successfully used vacuum tubes to do mathematical calculations. The machine was called the Atanasoff Berry Computer, or ABC.
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…
The abacus was probably invented by the Babylonians. It was refined and used by the Romans, Chinese, Arabs, Europeans, and Asians as late as the seventeenth century. It is still used, in various forms, in the Middle East and Japan.
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…