The first elevator, called the Flying Chair, was erected in King Louis XV’s private apartments in the Palace of Versailles in 1743.
It gave him ready access to his mistress, Madame de Chateauroux, on the floor above.
The Flying Chair was operated by weights.
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.
The original camel for Camel cigarettes was an Arabian dromedary named “Old Joe” that appeared in the Barnum & Bailey Circus at the turn of the century. At that time, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was looking for an exotic name and concept to link with its new Oriental and Turkish blend cigarette. On…
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…
In the Middle Ages, people stored money in a “pygg jar,” made of a clay called pygg. By the eighteenth century in England, the name and shape of the receptacle had evolved to “pig bank”, and from there to piggy bank.
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”)…
An inventor from Massachusetts named Earl D. Tupper invented Tupperware in 1942. In the 1930s, Tupper, a chemist at Du Pont, experimented with a new durable plastic called polyethylene. Tupper thought it could be used for all types of housewares, and he developed some test products. The first piece of Tupperware, a bathroom cup, was…