Why was 1922 such a seminal year for horror, both fictional and real?
How did a novel change the course of literary history even though nobody reads or understands
it?
Keep watching to find out!
In 1982, the USA Water Ski & Wake Sports Foundation inducted Ralph Samuelson into their Hall of
Fame.
It's kind of surprising it took them so long to do so — Samuelson didn't live to see
it, he had died in 1977 — because without him, there would be no such thing as water
skiing.
It was the day before Samuelson's 19th birthday when he and his brother were experimenting
with boats and skis on Minnesota's Lake Pepin.
He came up with the idea to tilt the skis and let the boat pull him along and then — with
the help of some scrap pieces of leather and a tape-wrapped iron ring — water skiing
was born, at a speed of about 14 mph.
He also performed the first jump on water skis — but not over a shark.
Vampire movies have been all the rage in the 21st century, but they're all pale imitations
of the original, which turns 100 in 2022.
When "Nosferatu" was released in 1922, it helped define what horror movies could — and
should — be, but it almost didn't see the light of day.
At a glance, there aren't many similarities between the titular vampire in Bram Stoker's
"Dracula" and the ghoulish Count Orlok.
Still, "Nosferatu" was an unauthorized adaptation of "Dracula," and that meant legal trouble.
The production company behind "Nosferatu" had started with "Dracula," and when Stoker's
widow refused to sell the rights, they changed all the names, called it good enough, and
started filming.
Three years after the film's 1922 premiere, Stoker's widow didn't just win her lawsuit,
but the courts ordered all copies, negatives, and prints of "Nosferatu" destroyed.
Many were, and the movie almost didn't survive.
However, in a story that weirdly parallels Dracula's own tale, copies of the film were
taken overseas, where an accidentally expired copyright meant the story was in the public
domain.
Fly free, Count Orlok!
How aggressively Australian is Vegemite?
According to the National Museum of Australia, it's long been marketed as a national symbol
that embodies, quote, "Australian vitality and innocence."
The simple spread was created by a chemist named Dr. Cyril P. Callister, who had been
hired by the Fred Walker Company and given instructions to come up with something that
was sort of like the British snack spread Marmite, and used the same brewer's yeast.
Marmite was already wildly popular in Australia, so Vegemite languished in near obscurity for
years.
It wasn't until a 1937 contest — that promised cars and other prizes to the winners — that
people started reaching for Vegemite over Marmite.
The fact that it was rich in vitamin B meant that it wasn't long before it became doctor-recommended,
and World War II — with a deep longing for home — cemented this now century-old spread
in the hearts of Australians everywhere.
"Now, I suggest you mix a little vegemite in with his milk.
And give him vegemite spread on bread and butter."
While most people might have 24/7 access to the news, weather, and sports scores today,
it's easy to forget that wasn't always the case.
As radio became more and more popular, those tuning in were likely to hear amateur stations
— until November 14, 1922.
That's when the British Broadcasting Company made their very first radio broadcast, and
a century later, the BBC remains a go-to for everything from news to entertainment to sports.
What was that first broadcast?
According to the Oxford University Press, Arthur Burrows went on-air at 6 p.m. to deliver
a news bulletin that awesomely included an update about a train robbery.
Other stories were a little more familiar to modern ears, and those who tuned in to
that very first broadcast heard about political goings-on, the weather, and sports scores.
The BBC didn't have a general manager until exactly a month later, with John Charles Walsham
Reith later explaining,
"I hadn't the remotest idea as to what broadcasting was."
The BBC broadcast their first experimental TV show in 1932.
In 2021, ice cream giant Froneri announced that they were going to be changing the name
of one of their most iconic treats: The Eskimo Pie.
That wasn't exactly an acceptable name to modern audiences, so the chocolate-covered
ice cream treat became Edy's Pie, as a nod to ice cream innovator Joseph Edy.
The name change came just in time for the dessert's 100th birthday: According to the
Smithsonian, the dessert was patented on January 24, 1922.
There's another chocolate-covered ice cream treat turning 100 in 1922 as well, and that's
the Klondike bar.
And... the York Daily Record says Klondike, the Edy’s Pie, and Good Humor bars didn't
just all debut in 1922, they all hit shelves in the same three-week span.
Clearly, it was a good year for ice cream.
It's one of the most famous buildings in the United States, and it's turning 100 years
old in 2022: the Lincoln Memorial.
Construction on the Lincoln Memorial started in 1914, says the National Park Service, and
when it was officially dedicated and opened to the public on Memorial Day of 1922, it
was soon enough after Lincoln's presidency that his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was there
to see the massive statue of his father unveiled.
Modeled after the Parthenon in ancient Greece, the Lincoln Memorial was made with a variety
of stones from around the country to symbolize not just one of the nation's most influential
presidents, but the importance that the union of states held for him.
Since it was unveiled, it's hosted equally monumental events (like Martin Luther King
Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech) and is visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year.
The "Necronomicon" shows up in scores of horror movies and novels, but the very first time
this deadly, demonic book was mentioned, it was in a short story by H.P.
Lovecraft.
"The Hound" was published in "Weird Tales" in 1924, but according to Tor, Lovecraft first
wrote the story in 1922.
So, that's when the book was "born," probably kicking, screaming, and dragging some demons
up from the depths of hell along with it.
The story is about two grave robbers who head to Holland and a 500-year-old tomb.
When they dig up the surprisingly well-preserved skeleton, they see it's been buried with a
jade amulet, which they had read about in something called the "Necronomicon."
That's really all it takes to make your skin crawl, and that's it for the mention of the
book that went to be featured throughout the horror genre as the bound-in-skin source of
all that is evil in this world... and all others.
Happy birthday!
The media giant Time Inc. began on November 28, 1922, when Yale classmates Henry Luce
and Briton Hadden started the company that would start publishing Time magazine the following
year.
But that was just the start.
Over the years, the Time Inc. empire has included Life magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and Sports
Illustrated.
And through the acquisition of Warner Communications, they developed pay-per-view television and
premium channels like HBO.
Also in the mix was Hollywood giant Warner Bros., the Turner Broadcasting System, and
much, much later, AOL.
"Downloading is easy too!
You know, I can even send email on the internet?
And of course, there's my personal favorite, live chat.
That's how I met my new kayaking buddies!"
The franchise that started out as "Our Gang" is turning 100, as the original film debuted
in 1922.
That initial group of short films delighted Depression-era and World War II-era children
right up to 1944.Their enduring popularity was due to a whole host of reasons, from the
charm and relatability of the children themselves to the fact that although Jim Crow laws were
the norm throughout much of the U.S., the cast of "Our Gang" featured a racially diverse
cast of characters.
That popularity only increased when the 221 short films were rebranded "The Little Rascals"
for the new medium of television, bringing in new generations of viewers.
There was even a feature film reboot in 1994!
Thanks to the widespread popularity of Marvel movies, comic books have seen a massive resurgence
in popularity.
But it wasn't that long ago that they simply just didn't exist, as the concept of the monthly
comic book debuted in 1922.
Of course, there's quite a bit of debate on what the first comic book was, and since things
like political cartoons and newspaper funnies had been around for decades, things get tricky.
Many modern comic collectors date the creation of the comic book to 1933 when the current
format was adopted.
However, the idea of a monthly comic book actually came in 1922, with the publishing
of the aptly named "Comic Monthly."
It, too, was a collection of comic strips that had already been printed in other media,
but for the first time, publishers proved that there was a demand for regular, monthly
installments of illustrated stories.
Comics have never looked back.
"This is the Spikeman!"
"And what's this right here?"
"This is the camera on top of your head that will record the wrongdoings of others."
"So Rob, have you had any formal art training?"
"No!"
There are some things that just seem like they've been around forever, like bras.
Right?
Not precisely: According to the Jewish Women's Archive, the modern bra was only created in
the 1920s.
At the time, it was a boyish figure that was all the rage, and when Ida Rosenthal turned
her seamstress business into an undergarment manufacturer, she copyrighted the name "Maidenform"
to set her apart from others in the industry.
Rosenthal registered her copyright in 1922, says PBS, and remained afloat even throughout
the difficult years of the Depression and World War II.
It was about the same time that Maidenform became another first: When they kicked off
a massive 1940s-era marketing campaign, they became the first women's intimate apparel
company to advertise.
When James Joyce published "Ulysses" in 1922, the world went, "What?"
And it's been saying that ever since.
Even though The New York Times called the novel the, quote, "most important contribution
that has been made to fictional literature in the 20th century," they also described
it in their 1922 review as, quote, "prose with studied incoherence," and then went on
to predict that only about 10% of the population would capable of reading it - or would want
to.
Fast forward to the 75th anniversary of Joyce's death, and The Guardian still agreed, with
their reviewer saying she needed a nap after forcing herself to get through 40 pages.
That's not surprising, considering it's filled with verses like
"Open your eyes for now.
I will.
One moment.
Has all vanished since?
If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane.
Basta!
I will see if I can see.
See now."
And so on, and so on.
That hasn't kept people from trying, though, so how about giving it another go on birthday
100?
Then, let the rest of the world know what it's about.
It's the little things that can make the day bearable, and milkshakes are definitely one
of those things.
Fans should celebrate a 100th birthday in 2022, then, not of the milkshake itself, but
of the device that makes them so much easier to make: the electric blender.
It took Polish immigrant Stephen Poplawski about four years to invent and perfect the
electric blender before applying for his patent in 1922.
He had originally been hired to come up with a machine that would make working in a malt
shop and prepping all those delicious shakes much easier, and his device with a base-mounted
"agitator" and cup was so popular that the company who hired him — Arnold Electric
Co. — became wildly successful.
The Wisconsin Historical Society says that he then went on to invent a home version in
1933, and a hand-held mixer in 1940.
Good news!
That makes baking a birthday cake much, much easier — just like blenders make it much
easier to fight off gremlins.
The world famous Hollywood Bowl kicked off its first season of concerts and events on
July 11, 1922 — and the place hasn't stopped ever since.
In the years since those first concertgoers sat on wooden benches to listen to the Philharmonic,
the venue has hosted everyone from poets and composers to The Doors and Monty Python.
The Hollywood Bowl was built in a location in the Hollywood Hills that has some incredible,
naturally occurring acoustic properties.
Add in the surrounding scenery and bandshells that have — throughout the years — been
designed like people including the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, it's safe to say that
it isn't just a venue, it's an experience.
Making that experience even easier: the venue is open to the public most of the time, even
during many rehearsals and sound checks.
Fun!
Reader's Digest was way ahead of its time: 100 years ahead, to be exact.
While social media and the internet have conditioned 21st-century minds to like little bite-sized
pieces of news and entertainment, Reader's Digest was doing that way back in 1922.
According to Funding Universe, DeWitt Wallace got the idea from his own habit of making
notes as he read.
If notes were handy for him, he reasoned, others might appreciate them, too.
So, he decided to start a magazine that would essentially take full-size articles, condense
them down to more manageable, abridged versions, and compile them into a magazine he'd sell
via the mail.
It was a massive hit, and he had nearly a quarter of a million subscribers by 1929.
Condensed books were added in 1950, and although the publication had some 21st century struggles
and bankruptcies, CNBC says new management has turned things around with a digitally-focused
rebrand.
Anyone in the construction or woodworking industry is familiar with a radial arm saw,
and for the rest, it's basically a machine that has a saw blade mounted to a platform
and allows the user to maneuver wood around in order to more easily cut it.
Pretty straightforward, right?
Actually, the radial arm saw is a big deal for a few reasons.
Not only did it make carpentry much easier and safer, but it also helped launch one of
the biggest companies in construction equipment today: DeWalt.
Raymond DeWalt was working at a place called Seabrook Farms when he invented the radial
arm saw in 1922, and as one of the higher-ups, he'd been looking for something to make his
employees more productive.
Realizing that the saw had huge commercial possibilities, he went on to found DeWalt
Products Company just two years later.
Selling the saw along with a few other power tools, his new-fangled gadgets and gizmos
did so well that he upgraded their location in another five years.
A full 100 years after that first invention, DeWalt remains an industry leader.
Reiki, says the University of Minnesota, is a form of therapy where practitioners hold
their hands on or above a person's body in order to heal them.
It sounds like an ancient and mystical process, right?
They also say that it dates back to 1922, and a lay monk named Mikao Usui .
Usui credited his life-long spiritual practices and exposure to the different beliefs of Shintoism,
Buddhism, and Taoism for allowing him to develop the practice of Reiki, which he discovered
in "a profound revelation" just 100 years ago.
Originally training just 16 Reiki masters, Usui saw his teachings spread globally.
Though the type of Reiki practiced today is pretty different from the original form, the
basic principles remain the same.
How and why does it work?
The University of Minnesota says no one's quite sure what's going on, and current scientific
research is still in the "theory" territory.
Love a quick and easy meal that's hearty and filling along with being premade?
Stouffer's lasagna has been a staple in the freezers of busy homes for decades, and it
all started in 1922.
According to Case Western Reserve University's Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, that's
when Abraham and Lena Stouffer turned one of their family's Medina County Creamery stands
into a restaurant, and started serving things like sandwiches and homemade apple pie.
It was the pie that was a major hit and allowed them to keep expanding.
Their sons opened restaurants of their own, and by the 1950s, their food was in such high
demand that they started selling pre-cooked meals to go.
Founder A.E.
Stouffer had died in 1931 and didn't get to see this part of the business's success, but
it had remained in the hands of his sons.
They absolutely took it to the next level when they founded their frozen food division:
It's easy to see how and why it became so popular, and it all started when they opened
their doors a century ago.
Childhood isn't complete unless it involves some serious heartbreak and nightmare-inducing
stories, and while tales like "Bambi" certainly fit the bill, the little deer who loses his
mother to a hunter's bullet isn't the only traumatic childhood tale.
Case in point: "The Velveteen Rabbit," the 1922 story of a toy rabbit who is initially
tossed aside by the child who gets him as a Christmas gift.
The boy eventually becomes attached to the rabbit and imagines him to be a real, flesh-and-blood
bunny.
Things get super dark when the boy nearly dies of scarlet fever, and in order to disinfect
his room, all his possessions — including his beloved rabbit — are thrown on a pile
for burning.
Before that can happen, a fairy appears and grants the rabbit's wish: to become a real
rabbit.
He escapes the fire, but those who read it definitely didn't escape the heartbreak.
In fact, Penn State University Libraries said that ever-present themes of sadness were one
of the biggest criticisms of author Margery Williams Bianco's work.
But she believed that no one could grow up, mature, and change without a little sadness,
and so this incredibly sad tale has now been giving kids a complex about their stuffed
toys for 100 years.
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