How About a Little Bit of Fun This Week?
As it’s the holiday season and all of us could use a little bit of fun, how about for this week we just play a game? It’s an easy game to play, and you might learn something you never even thought about, or knew but took for granted, or knew but didn’t know details.
The game is “Which Came First?” I am about to present a list of twenty pairs of things, events, and people and ask you to decide which one came first. That’s it. While you might guess correctly or even know the correct answer, the stories behind the answers might intrigue or amuse you and the dates on some might surprise you. If it makes it more interesting, each correct choice earns five points. The pairs will be listed alphabetically; answers with explanations will be found at the end of the list, but no peeking!
Ready? Here goes.
Which Came First?
1. Diamond Engagement Rings or Printed Books
2. Mechanical Clocks or the Signing of the Magna Carta
3. Pepsi Cola or the Vending Machine
4. Elevators or Helicopters
5. The Electric Guitar or Studio-released Movies with Sound (“talkies”)
6. Jelly or Peanut Butter
7. Margarine or Radar
8. Antiseptics or the Saxophone
9. Buffalo Wings or the Computer Mouse
10. The Electric Toaster or the Gas Mask
11. High Heel Shoes or Paper Money
12. Coffee, as a beverage, or Richard I (“Richard the Lionhearted”)
13. Catherine of Aragon or Michelangelo
14. The Electric Doorbell or the Tuxedo
15. Humphrey Bogart or Louis Armstrong
16. Color Television Sets or Seat Belts
17. Crackerjacks or Hot Dogs
18. Cookies or Doughnuts
19. Jackie Robinson’s first major league baseball game or the First Television Commercial
20. The First Safety Pin or the First In-store Santa
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And now, the answers (correct answers are in bold type).
1. In 1477, Archduke Maximillian of Austria commissioned the very first diamond engagement ring on record for his betrothed, Mary of Burgundy.
The printing of books started in China. The oldest known printed book still in existence is a Tang Dynasty work of the Diamond Sutra and dates back to 868 CE.
2. The first mechanical clocks were invented in Europe at around the start of the 14th century, and became the standard timekeeping device until the pendulum clock was invented in 1656.
The Magna Carta was signed in 1215.
3. The first recorded example of a vending device was during the first century CE. Hero of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician invented a machine that dispensed holy water in Egyptian temples. (Hey, a fundraising idea for SUUS?)
Pepsi was introduced as “Brad’s Drink” in New Bern, North Carolina, in 1893 by Caleb Bradham. It was renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898.
4. Elevators aren’t always electric. They date back to 300 BCE, when platforms were used to take workers and supplies from the ground up to build structures, and they were run by a pulley system. The electric elevator was invented by Elisha Otis in 1853.
Although Leonardo da Vinci designed the first prototype helicopter – which he called the aerial screw – around 1500, credit for inventing the helicopter goes to Paul Coru, a Frenchman who in 1907 invented a helicopter that could only stay in the air for about a minute, and couldn’t travel far. He gave up trying to figure out how to improve it. Igor Sikorsky invented a practical helicopter in 1939.
5. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, which premiered on October 6, 1927
Paul H. Tutmarc is credited with inventing the first solid-body electric bass guitar in 1935.
6. Jelly is believed to have been invented in the Middle East sometime in the first century CE.
The earliest reference to peanut butter can be traced back to the Ancient Incas and the Aztecs who ground roasted peanuts into an edible paste around 3,000 years ago. In1895 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (the creator of Kellogg’s cereal) patented a process for creating peanut butter from raw peanuts. He marketed it as a healthy protein substitute for patients without teeth.
7. Margarine was invented in France by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès in 1869, during the Franco-Prussian wars. He invented it in response to a competitive challenge from the French government under Napoleon III, who was looking for a cheap and stable substitute for butter that his soldiers could travel with.
The first practical radar system was produced in 1935 by the British physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt.
8. Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1841, but didn’t patent it until 1846.
Antiseptics were invented by Ignaz Semmelweis in 1847.
9. Doug Engelbart invented the computer “mouse” in 1963 as an efficient way to control a pointer on a graphics display screen. With a small wooden box, moving around on wheels, and connected to a computer with a cable, “mouse” seemed like a logical name.
Deep-fried chicken wings have long been a staple of Southern cooking. But the concept of cooking wings in peppery hot sauce was born in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, when co-owner Teressa Bellissimo cooked leftover wings in hot sauce as a late-night snack for her son and his friends.
10. The first electric toaster was invented in 1893 by Alan MacMasters
The gas mask was invented in 1847 by Lewis Haslett.
11. High heel shoes date to the 10th Century, when Persian warriors wore them to keep their feet secured in stirrups so they could shoot arrows more effectively while standing on a galloping horse. High heels as we know them today began in 1533 when the 14-year-old, and very short, Catherine de Medici married the tall Duke of Orange.
The first recorded use of government-issued paper money was in 11th century China. This currency replaced those produced by private enterprises of the time.
12. It is generally accepted that the coffee plant was discovered in Ethiopia in the 11th Century. At that time, it was the leaves that were boiled to make a beverage.
Richard I was born on September 8, 1157 at Beaumont Place, Oxford.
13. Michelangelo was born March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Republic of Florence.
Catherine of Aragon was born on December 16, 1485, in Alcalá de Henares, Spain
14. The first electric doorbell was invented in 1831 by Joseph Henry, an American scientist who later went on to serve as first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Though many attribute the creation of the tuxedo to wealthy American aristocrats attending the Autumn Ball in Tuxedo Park, New York, the garment was designed in 1865 for Edward VII (then the Prince of Wales), according to The Wall Street Journal.
15. Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901, in New Orleans.
Humphrey Bogart was born in New York City on December 25, 1899.
16. The first patented seat belt was created by Edward J. Claghorn on February 10, 1885 in order to keep tourists safe in taxis in New York City.
Although all-electronic color televisions were introduced in the U.S. in 1953, high prices and the scarcity of color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on January 1, 1954.
17. Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” as far back as the 9th Century BCE. However, a sausage, or frankfurter as one type of sausage was named in the 1600’s, is just a sausage until it sits in a bun. Only then does it become a hot dog.
While it is believed (but unsubstantiated) that the very first hot dog was sold by a German immigrant out of a food cart in New York in the 1860’s, in 1871, a German baker named Charles Feltman opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand selling 3,684 “dachshund sausages” in milk rolls during his first year in business.
As for the name, “dog” was a common way in the early 1800’s for Americans to refer to German frankfurters as they erroneously believed the sausage was made of dog meat. The term “hot dog” to describe the sandwich first saw print in the Evansville (Indiana) Daily Courier on September 14, 1884.
A unique and delicious popcorn, peanuts, and molasses confection was introduced by F.W. Rueckheim at the first World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. Allegedly, his brother and business partner Louis Rueckheim gave the treat to a salesman who exclaimed “That’s a Cracker Jack!” “So it is,” said F.W. Rueckheim, who had the words trademarked in 1896.
18. Although the Dutch brought doughnuts (olykoeks:”oily cakes”) to the Americas in the 17th century; archeologists have traced sweetened fried dough in small shapes to the Archaic Indian era, around 9000 BCE. The earliest known use of the word doughnut was written in an 1809 book about New York written by Washington Irving.
Cookies originated in Persia sometime in the 700’s, right after sugar was introduced to the region. The first use of the word cookie was found in a 1796 American cookbook.
19. The first television commercial was for Bulova watches during a baseball game on July 1, 1941 and ran for just under ten seconds. It appeared on New York’s WNBC and cost the advertiser $9.00.
Jackie Robinson made his major league debut on April 15, 1947, as the Brooklyn Dodger’s first baseman.
20 James Wood Parkinson was one of the most influential American cooks of the nineteenth century and by the mid 1840’s had established himself as a restauranteur in Philadelphia. Parkinson’s Salon included a delicatessen that featured imported foods from all over the world. In 1841, his delicatessen was the first in the country to feature Santa Claus at Christmas in order to draw children into a wonderland of French confections and imported toys.
American Walter Hunt invented the safety pin in 1849. He quickly sold the patent rights for $400 (adjusted for inflation, approximately $12,440).
I hope you enjoyed this game as much as I enjoyed finding out the details on some of the answers. In fact, I enjoyed the section on hot dogs so much so that you could say I wrote it with relish. (Don’t get up; I’ll let myself out …)
This week’s Street Advertising Smile:
