- Do you ever just stare at something
that you use everyday and think,
"Hmm, I wonder where this came from?"
Well, the answer might just surprise you.
- I wonder where this tomato came from.
- As it turns out, some of the things
that we use on a regular basis that we're all familiar with
did not start out the way that we know and use them today,
and some of these things have weird, ridiculous,
or straight up awkward histories
that are so strange, they will shock you.
So, let's discover what these things are.
Here are ten everyday items with amazing origins.
Number one is the chainsaw.
You might be surprised to learn that while
our first item is usually used to kill trees,
its initial function was to help give life.
The chainsaw was first invented around 1830
by Dr. Bernard Heine.
A German orthopedist, Dr. Heine created the mechanical tool
after constantly seeing complications
when assisting female patients while they give birth.
This invention, which he originally dubbed the osteotome,
had small rotating chain links,
which carried tiny angled metal teeth
perfect for cutting through bone.
The original purpose of it was to widen
a woman's pelvis in order to make childbirth
smoother and easier on the mother.
The bone chainsaw, as it was later called,
was operated by hand,
by turning a handle which spun the chain.
Later on, this invention was used to remove diseased bone,
and it wasn't until the 1920s that chainsaws
became popular tree clearing machines.
And exactly what year did directors decide
that the chainsaw was going to become terrifying?
'Cause it's Jason's weapon of choice.
Number two is Listerine.
Whenever I'm out of mouthwash,
I always turn to my trusty backup liquid, floor cleaner.
After all, that's what Listerine used to be.
Long before the antiseptic mouthwash product
held the slogan, "Kills germs that cause bad breath,"
Listerine was used for a number of things
that were quite different from what we use them for today.
Invented by a Missouri chemist named Joseph Lawrence in 1879
Listerine was originally a powerful surgical antiseptic.
It was for this use that the product got its name,
and it was Joseph Lister, a pioneer in the field of
antiseptic surgery, that Lawrence named it after.
Listerine would go on to be used in the early 1900s
as both a floor cleaner and, get this, a cure for gonorrhea.
Wait, which one's gonorrhea?
Is that the one that hurts when it pees or the itchy one?
I'm just glad I don't know.
Then, in the 1920s, it became known as a substance
that could kill bad breath, and the rest is history.
Though, it should be said that having bad breath
didn't seem to be that big of a deal
until Listerine's print ads claimed that it was.
Way to create a problem and solve it,
floor cleaning mouthwash!
Number three is Silly Putty.
Everyone's heard of Silly Putty,
that squishy, bouncy, newspaper print lifting
goop of awesomeness that puts smiles on the faces of
millions of kids around the world.
But incredibly, this wacky slime owes
its creation to the American government.
During the second World War, after Japan invaded
a number of countries that produced rubber,
a shortage hit the United States.
Since they needed the material for everything
from rafts to tires to boots, this was a big deal.
So, the government hired a bunch of scientists
to develop synthetic rubber,
one of those scientists being James Wright.
Wright found what he thought was the solution
by mixing silicone oil and boric acid.
The result was Silly Putty,
a substance that actually serves no military purpose,
but kids around the world would eventually come to love.
Imagine that.
Something that was made to help a war
brought fun and smiles to kids' faces instead.
It's awesome.
Number four is Vaseline.
Discovered by Robert Augustus Chesebrough
at only 22 years old,
Vaseline is a petroleum jelly based product
that today has its name on a number of different products,
from soaps to skin creams.
Oh, but in case you didn't know,
that clear gunk that you use on your body
is actually a byproduct of oil drilling.
In 1859, Chesebrough met with some oil barons
in Titusville, Pennsylvania, who explained
a certain obstacle that they'd been dealing with
in regards to their oil rigs.
It turns out that the drills that they were working with
were constantly getting gummed up with a waxy substance
which they referred to as rod wax.
Fascinated by it, Chesebrough took a sample of it
back to his hometown of Brooklyn, New York to be tested,
and ten years later, this gunk,
which Chesebrough named Vaseline,
was marketed as a healing agent.
He toured the United States acting like a masochist
as he cut and burned himself
to let the medicinal oil do its work.
He even claimed to eat a spoonful everyday as,
according to him, it prolonged his life.
Okay, that's just nasty,
gunkin' up your body with that stuff.
Leave it on the outside, baby.
Number five are graham crackers.
Oh, the irony of the graham cracker.
Who would have thought that the bread replacement on
your delicious s'mores sandwich was actually invented with
the purpose of stopping the good times?
So to speak.
Sylvester Graham was a Presbyterian minister
and dietary reformer who believed
it was God's intention for mankind to live
a dull life with as few pleasures as possible.
So, in accordance with that belief,
he lived by the rule that eating only whole wheats
ground coarsely at home was allowed.
Some of his followers believing in his preachings of
minimizing pleasure invented a cracker
that they felt was perfectly in line with these rules,
as it was without any fun or flavor whatsoever,
a plain, dry, crumby cracker that they affectionately named
after their ridiculously boring leader.
The hope was that the graham cracker would reduce libido
and decrease people's sexy fun times.
Of course, then, the s'more was invented,
and I'm guessing that they all cried
because those things are made of nothing but awesome.
Number six is Kotex.
Okay, Matt, you're an adult male, you can talk about this.
Tampons! Okay, nailed it.
Believe it or not, Kotex, one of the world's
leading brands of feminine hygiene products,
didn't start out that way at all.
In fact, their parent company started out
making bandages for wounded soldiers during World War I.
After the war ended on November 11th, 1918,
wounds became scarce, and thus,
the need for bandages did, as well.
This left Kimberly-Clark, the company that owns
the Kotex brand, with a large excess of CelluCotton,
the wood pulp fiber used in making the bandages.
Then, in 1920, the company came up with
a new use for the absorbent material.
Developing an alternative to rival Johnson and Johnson's
disposable pads, the Kotex brand was born.
Number seven is bubble wrap.
Ah, bubble wrap, so satisfying to pop.
The world became obsessed with doing just that
back in the 1960s, but for its popularity,
this super satisfying package filler owes
just as a big a thank you to interior decorators
as it does the postal service.
That's because bubble wrap started out as 3D wallpaper
that lined the walls of a garage in Hawthorne, New Jersey.
Initially created by sealing two shower curtains together
and leaving dozens of air pockets in between,
bubble wrap was invented by Alfred Fielding, an engineer,
and his partner, Marc Chavannes, in 1957.
At first, the two men considered their invention
a failure in decorating with a space age motif,
as nobody wanted to buy their poppable wallpaper.
They then tried selling it as greenhouse insulation,
but that didn't sell either.
It wasn't until 1960 that the two men founded
Sealed Air Corp, and their invention began
lining packages instead of their own garage.
Nothing more satisfying than bubble wrap, pop pop.
Number eight is the bra.
It's actually a common belief that the bra was invented by
a man to make women's breasts look more pleasing
or to show off a man's control over women by
making them wear something incredibly uncomfortable.
But, bras were actually invented in 1910 by
Mary Phelps Jacob as a way to free her fellow women.
Specifically, it was created to replace
the incredibly uncomfortable corsets
that men had told them to wear,
which were insanely popular between
the 16th and 19th centuries.
While Mary managed to secure a patent for
her invention in 1914, it was actually
the first World War that got business booming.
As the war created a metal shortage,
the corset's days all but came to an end.
Even those opposed to wearing the undergarment
had little choice but to turn to the bra.
So, the bra is no symbol of male oppression,
as millions still believe, but instead,
in a way, is actually a symbol of women's liberation.
Number nine is chocolate milk.
How we came to be able to enjoy
this incredible drink is pretty unreal.
Between 1687 and 1688, Irish botanist, naturalist,
and collector, Sir Hans Sloane, became the personal
in house physician to the governor of Jamaica.
While traveling through the country,
the doctor was given a cocoa drink by the locals
that they considered a delicacy.
A mixture of cocoa and water, Sloane found it delicious,
though he quickly discovered that it did not agree
very well with his stomach and he became very nauseous.
But not wanting to give up on the tasty, tasty beverage,
he decided to mix the cocoa with milk instead of water,
and presto, chocolate milk was born.
Returning with the tasty new beverage to the UK,
Sloane actually initially sold it
in apothecaries as medicine.
Moooove over, 'cause this is delicious.
And number ten is the automatic transmission.
Let's switch gears for a moment for this last one.
Back in the 1950s, it was super manly to have a car,
and it was especially manly if that car
contained as many buttons and gadgets as possible.
But driving a car like a man meant driving stick,
with what we call today a standard or manual transmission.
Surprisingly, with automobile manufacturers worried
that men would be insulted by offering
a car that helped them drive by itself,
vehicles with automatic transmissions were actually
originally marketed towards women.
Now, back then, it was rare for women of the house
to make a big decision, like buying a car,
so when I say they were marketed towards women,
I really mean the wives of men.
Yeah, the 1950s were super sexist.
Ads claiming that men should buy an automatic car for
the little lady in their life were pretty common,
some going as far as to claim that women are already
so distracted that they need all the help that they can get.
Of course, today, could literally
put a company out of business,
but when the automatic transmission
was introduced to the market,
apparently it became the norm.
So those were ten crazy origins of everyday items.
But as always, I want to know from you,
is there something else that we use in our everyday lives
that started out as something else?
Leave your response below,
because I'll be reading through them
and I'm going to pin the best comment to the top.
Thank you guys so much for coming by today.
If you enjoyed this, make sure you hit that like button,
and remember to come back tomorrow
at exactly 3PM eastern standard time,
because I'll have a brand new video for you.
I will see you then.
Bye!