Refresh for new random facts
1. Brothers Isaiah and John Wesley Hyatt developed plastic in 1869 while competing for a $10,000 prize offered by a company looking for a substitute for ivory in billiard balls.
2. Frozen food entrepreneur Clarence Birdseye also invented a recoilless harpoon for whaling and a fast process for converting sugar cane waste into paper pulp.
3. Alexander Graham Bell was one of the founders of National Geographic magazine.
4. Nathaniel C. Wyeth, son of artist N.C. Wyeth, brother of artists Andrew, Carolyn and Henriette Wyeth, developed the plastic soda bottle while working as an engineer for the DuPont Company.
5. Wanamaker's of Philadelphia, was the first U.S. department store to install electric lighting, in 1878.
6. The first major deodorant company in the U.S. was called Odorono; its first ad led hundreds of women to cancel their subscriptions to Ladies Home Journal in 1919.
7. When Coca-Cola appeared in 1886 it was marketed as an "Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage."
8. Henry Ford invented the charcoal briquettes that are commonly used by the grilling enthusiasts of today, to make use of scrap wood left over in the manufacture of the Model T.
9. Secure, high-yielding stocks came to be known as "blue chips," because in poker blue chips are more valuable than red or white.
10. Steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie would be worth upwards of $200 billion in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation.
When me and old Abe used to sit by the fire he would tell me the darndest tales about this great land of ours.
