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.
The peace symbol was created in 1958 as a nuclear disarmament symbol by the Direct Action Committee. It was first shown that year at peace marches in England. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals N and D, representing nuclear disarmament.
The lion, developed before the formation of MGM, was the original trademark for the newly formed (Samuel) Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. It was the creation of a young advertising man named Howard Dietz, who was inspired by his alma mater Columbia University’s football song, “Roar, Lion, Roar!” Later on, Dietz also came up with the motto…
The rubber-like compound Silly Putty is composed, in part, of boric acid and silicone oil. Silly Putty was invented at the General Electric laboratories in the 1940s as an inexpensive synthetic rubber for use during World War II. It gained its greatest popularity when New Haven, Connecticut, store owner Paul Hodgson bought a large quantity…
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…
Haagen-Dazs has no particular meaning, and is two made-up words meant to look and sound Scandinavian. It is a name created by its developer, Reuben Mattus, a Polish emigre living in the United States, to convey a European sensibility. Haagen-Dazs ice cream started in the Bronx, New York, in 1961, and had only three flavors:…
Developed in 1914 by George Bunting, a Baltimore pharmacist, the skin cream Noxzema was originally called Dr. Bunting’s Sunburn Remedy. He searched in vain for a better name until one day a customer entered his drugstore and told him, “Your sunburn cream sure knocked out my eczema.” The concoction that “knocks eczema” became Noxzema.