The first propelled airplane was launched on December 17, 1903 by brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Their historic flight on the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was the culmination of years of research and trials. Since that time, aviation has progressed rapidly leading up to a landing on the moon on July 20, 1969.
Native Americans used to chew the sap from spruce trees, a habit they passed on to early North American settlers. In 1848, John B. Curtis of Maine made and sold the first commercial chewing gum made from spruce sap and beeswax and soon after numerous chewing gum manufactures sprouted up. It wasn’t until 1906 that inventor Frank Fleer created the first bubble gum called Blibbler-Blubber.
Cakes date back to ancient times when Egyptians developed advanced baking skills. Modern cakes with icing were made in Europe in the mid 17th century. Layer-style cakes found their way into America and cookbooks in the late 19th century.
Chess originated in India around 570 AD. Later it spread north to Russia, east to Japan and west through Persia and Europe. As it spread it adopted terms from different languages like Persian and English. Chess came to the American colonies in the 17th century and has been growing in popularity every since.
Chocolate was invented by the peoples of Central America more than 2,000 years ago. The word chocolate is derived from the name of the Aztec goddess Xochiquetzal. Chocolate was introduced to the United States in 1765 when John Hanan brought cocoa beans from the West Indies into Dorchester, Massachusetts, to refine them with the help of Dr. James Baker. The first chocolate factory in the country was established there.
The tradition of Christmas trees comes from Germanic tribes’ celebration of winter festivals. In modern times, people began decorating fir trees with apples, nuts, and paper decorations. The tradition spread throughout Europe and the first Christmas trees in the United States were decorated around the time of the American Revolution.
Gummy bears originated in Bonn, Germany in 1922. A candy maker named Hans Riegel created the sweet, originally called “dancing bears” to sell at fairs. Although very popular throughout Europe, Americans were first introduced to the candy through high school German language classes. Jelly Belly, began producing them and American candy makers began making other gummy shapes.
Sausages had been a popular food throughout Europe for centuries, but it wasn’t until 1867 that the first hot dog was invented. Charles Feltman, a food-cart vendor on Coney Island, New York was looking for a compact way to served hot food. He came up with the idea of putting the popular sausages on buns so that people could easily carry them. Today Americans eat an estimated 20 billion hot dogs each year.
The idea of treating diabetes with the compound Insulin was proposed by Canadian scientist Sir Frederick Banting with the assistance of Charles Best. The discovery of Insulin would later lead to a Nobel Prize in 1923 for Banting and his colleague JJR Macleod, and changed the lives of millions of diabetics worldwide.
Jeans were initially created for Italian sailors who needed durable, but comfortable pants. The name "jeans" comes from Genoa, the Italian city the sailors were from. During the California gold rush, American clothing maker, Levi Strauss began using this cotton fabric, now know as denim, to make pants for mine workers. In 1873, he and Nevada tailor David Jacobs co-patented the riveting process. Their durability and use in cowboy films has made them extremely popular in the United States and the rest of the world.
LEGOs were invented in Denmark by Ole Kirk Christiansen in 1932. Initially they were very different from the rest of the toys manufactured by the company, most of which were made of wood. The name LEGO comes from shortening the Danish words "play well". The brick designs of LEGOs were introduced in 1949 and came to America in 1963.
Throughout the 19th century, many inventors made progress towards creating long-life incandescent bulbs, and in 1879, Thomas Edison, the American inventor and Joseph Wilson Swan, English physicist and chemist, created a filament that would last long enough to be useful. After further developments in 1880, Edison created a bulb that could last up to 1200 hours. Scientists around the world are continually searching for new technology to create more durable and more efficient bulbs.
Music boxes were first developed in Switzerland by Antoine Favre in 1796. Although small music boxes were the first on the market, some music boxes, particularly those like the player piano, can be quite large. Their popularity quickly spread to the United States where people used them to provide music while entertaining.
Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor developed the paperclip in 1899. He received a patent for his design from Germany in 1899 and an American patent in 1901. During World War II the paperclip became a symbol of solidarity with the Norwegian king and government.
The oldest ears of popcorn were found in what is now New Mexico and are believed to be over 4,000 years old. Popped corn was popular throughout the southwestern United States and Mexico. As American settlers arrived its popularity continued to spread. In 1940 popcorn was the very first food cooked by microwave heating. Today Americans eat more than 17 billion quarts of popcorn per year.
Early forms of pasta were invented around the globe, but the earliest long noodles, like spaghetti, were found in China. In Europe, especially Italy, it became a very popular food. In 1789, future president Thomas Jefferson brought the first “macaroni maker” to the United States. Around the same time, a Frenchman in Brooklyn, New York began to sell pasta commercially.
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland but moved later to Boston in US, where he started his career as an inventor. Throughout the 1880s, Alexander Graham Bell had been experimenting to improve the speed of communication through the telegraph. On March 10, 1876 he made the first “phone call” to his assistant Thomas A. Watson, uttering the famous words "Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you." Today the technology has advanced greatly with cell phones becoming more popular every day.
Neckties originated in Croatia. King Louis XIV of France began wearing them after meeting a delegation of Croatian soldiers in 1660. The styles of ties changed over time and they became popular in the United States in the 1860s. In the 1920s, a New York tie-maker invented several style and sewing techniques that have been used in ties worldwide ever since.
In 1596 Galileo invented a device that would indicate differences in temperature but did not apply a scale to it. Gabriel Fahrenheit, for whom the Fahrenheit scale is named, was the first person to use mercury in a thermometer to provide an accurate reading. In 1742 a Swedish scientist developed a scale of 0-100 from the freezing to boiling points. Today in the United States people commonly use the Fahrenheit scale to measure temperature.
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