Eyeglasses first appeared in Italy in the fourteenth century.
They were supposedly introduced by Alessandro di Spina of Florence.
Eyeglasses also appeared in China about this time; it is not clear who got the idea first.
Henry Ford did not invent assembly-line production. Ransom E. Olds, father of the Oldsmobile, introduced the assembly-line technique to the United States in 1901. In doing so, he increased automobile production from 425 vehicles in 1901 to over 2,500 in 1902. Ford contributed modifications, including the conveyor belt system, which reduced the time it took…
Too much air caused Ivory soap to float. It was originally an error in production. In 1878, Harley Procter and cousin James Gamble decided to create for their company a white soap that would rival the popular castile soaps of their competitors. The product was successful. Then, in 1879, a worker mistakenly allowed the soap…
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.
The Rubik’s Cube was designed by and named after Erno Rubik. It is made of 27 subcubes that rotate on horizontal and vertical axes. Rubik was a teacher of architecture and design at the School for Commercial Artists in Budapest.
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.
Most likely, the K in K rations represents the first letter of the last name of the product’s developer, Ancel Keys (b. 1904). Keys, a physiologist from Minnesota, developed the portions of food for soldiers in World War II.