Information on Companys and Useless Facts

Avery® Address Labels

• Avery Laser Labels are named after company founder R. Stanton Avery.
• In 1935, Stan Avery founded Kum-Kleen Products, making self-adhesive labels using machinery he had developed from an old washing machine motor and sewing machine. Avery renamed his company Avery Adhesives, which incorporated in 1946 and became the Avery Adhesive Label Corporation, with 80 percent of its sales stemming from industrial labels sold to manufacturers to label their own products.
• In 1952, Avery lost its patent rights for self-adhesive labels, compelling Avery to create a new division‹the Avery Paper Company‹to produce and market self-adhesive base materials.
• In 1990, Avery International Corporation merged with its longtime rival, Dennison Manufacturing Company. Dennison Manufacturing, founded in 1844 by Andrew Dennison and his son Aaron Dennison, produced jewelry boxes, eventually expanding into tags, labels, and tissue paper. The merger created Avery Dennison.
• Avery Dennison works closely with leading software companies to incorporate preset layouts for Avery labels directly into the software. These preset layouts enable computer users to print labels almost effortless without the hassles of having to adjust margins, set tabs, or create tables.
• In 1977, Avery began supplying adhesives for disposable diapers.
• Avery Dennison makes self-adhesive postage stamps for the United States Postal Service.
• Avery Dennison produces a wide variety of address labels. Avery labels are available in white, clear, or fluorescent colors, and are specially designed for laser or ink jet printers. Avery labels are also available for copiers, dot matrix printers, and typewriters.
• Avery Dennison also manufactures and markets pressure-sensitive adhesives and materials, office products, tags, retail systems, and specialty chemicals.
• Avery Dennison makes the best-selling office address labels in the United States.

• Avery Dennison operates 200 manufacturing facilities and sales offices in 36 countries.

• In 1996, Avery Dennison sold more than $3.2 billion worth of pressure-sensitive adhesives and materials.

  "Avery" is a registered trademark of Avery Dennison Corporation.

Coppertone®

• The name "Coppertone" signifies the copper-colored skin tone sun worshippers strive to obtain.
• Dr. Benjamin Green, a physician from Miami, Florida, helped the United States military develop sunscreen to protect soldiers stationed in the South Pacific during World War II from getting severe sunburns. After the war, he noticed that tourists in Miami used all kinds of home-made concoctions to bronze in the sun. He began experimenting with different formulas, using his own bald head as a testing ground, until he came up with the recipe for Coppertone suntan cream with the essence of jasmine in 1944.
• A picture of an Indian chief was on the first bottles of Coppertone, accompanied by the slogan "Don't be a Paleface." Little Miss Coppertone replaced him in 1953.
• To figure out how many hours of protection you can expect from a sunscreen, take the number of minutes it takes your skin to start burning without sunscreen, multiply by the sun protection factor (SPF) printed on the bottle of Coppertone, and divide the result by 60. For instance, if you usually burn in 30 minutes, an SPF 8 lotion should protect you for approximately 4 hours.
• The higher the SPF of a sunscreen, the higher the price.
• The higher in the sky the sun is, the higher the SPF number you need. Also, the closer to the equator you are, the stronger the sunscreen you need.
• Never use a sunscreen that is more than a year old. Abide by the expiration dates.
• As a child, actress Jodie Foster appeared in Coppertone commercials.

  "Coppertone" is a registered trademark of Schering-Plough HealthCare Products, Inc.

Crayola® Crayons

• Alice Binney, wife of company co-owner Edwin Binney, coined the word Crayola by joining craie, from the French word meaning chalk, with ola, from oleaginous, meaning oily.
• In 1864, Joseph W. Binney began the Peekskill Chemical Works in Peekskill, New York, producing hardwood charcoal and a black pigment called lampblack. In 1880 he opened a New York office and invited his son, Edwin Binney, and his nephew, C. Harold Smith, to join the company. The cousins renamed the company Binney & Smith and expanded the product line to include shoe polish, printing ink, black crayons, and chalk.
• In 1903, the Binney & Smith company made the first box of Crayola crayons costing a nickel and containing eight colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, and black.
• The now-classic 64-box of crayons, complete with built-in sharpener, was introduced in 1958. H
• In 1993, Binney & Smith celebrated Crayola brand's ninetieth birthday by introducing the biggest crayon box ever with 96 colors.
• In 1949, Binney & Smith introduced another forty colors: Apricot, Bittersweet, Blue Green, Blue Violet, Brick Red, Burnt Sienna, Carnation Pink, Cornflower, Flesh (renamed Peach in 1962, partly as a result of the civil rights movement), Gold, Gray, Green Blue, Green Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Magenta, Mahogany, Maize, Maroon, Melon, Olive Green, Orange Red, Orange Yellow, Orchid, Periwinkle, Pine Green, Prussian Blue (renamed Midnight Blue in 1958 in response to teachers' requests), Red Orange, Red Violet, Salmon, Sea Green, Silver, Spring Green, Tan, Thistle, Turquoise Blue, Violet Blue, Violet Red, White, Yellow Green, and Yellow Orange.
• In 1958, Binney & Smith added sixteen colors, bringing the total number of colors to 64: Aquamarine, Blue Gray, Burnt Orange, Cadet Blue, Copper, Forest Green, Goldenrod, Indian Red, Lavender, Mulberry, Navy Blue, Plum, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Sepia, and Sky Blue.
• In 1972, Binney & Smith introduced eight fluorescent colors: Atomic Tangerine, Blizzard Blue, Hot Magenta, Laser Lemon, Outrageous Orange, Screamin' Green, Shocking Pink, and Wild Watermelon. In 1990, the company introduced eight more fluorescent colors: Electric Lime, Magic Mint, Purple Pizzazz, Radical Red, Razzle Dazzle Rose, Sunglow, Unmellow Yellow, and Neon Carrot.
• In 1990, Binney & Smith retired eight traditional colored crayons from its 64-crayon box (Green Blue, Orange Red, Orange Yellow, Violet Blue, Maize, Lemon Yellow, Blue Gray, and Raw Umber) and replaced them with such New Age hues as (Cerulean, Vivid Tangerine, Jungle Green, Fuchsia, Dandelion, Teal Blue, Royal Purple, and Wild Strawberry). Retired colors were enshrined in the Crayola Hall of Fame. Protests from groups such as RUMPS (The Raw Umber and Maize Preservation Society) and CRAYON (The Committee to Reestablish All Your Old Norms) convinced Binney & Smith to release the one million boxes of the Crayola Eight in October 1991.
• In 1993, Binney & Smith introduced sixteen more colors, all named by consumers: Asparagus, Cerise, Denim, Granny Smith Apple, Macaroni and Cheese, Mauvelous, Pacific Blue, Purple Mountain's Majesty, Razzmatazz, Robin's Egg Blue, Shamrock, Tickle Me Pink, Timber Wolf, Tropical Rain Forest, Tumbleweed, and Wisteria.
• Washington Irving used the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon when he published The Sketch-Book, a collection of short stories and essays, including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.
• On average, children between the ages of two and seven color 28 minutes every day.
• The average child in the United States will wear down 730 crayons by his or her tenth birthday.
• The scent of Crayola crayons is among the twenty most recognizable to American adults.
• The Crayola brand name is recognized by 99 percent of all Americans.
• Red barns and black tires got their colors thanks in part to two of Binney & Smith's earliest products: red pigment and carbon black. Red and black are also the most popular crayon colors, mostly because children tend to use them for outlining.
• Binney & Smith is dedicated to environmental responsibility. Crayons that don't meet quality standards are remelted and used to make new crayons. Ninety percent of Crayola products packaging is made from recycled cardboard. The company also makes sure the wood in their colored pencils doesn't originate from tropical rain forests.
• Binney & Smith produces two billion Crayola crayons a year, which, if placed end to end, would circle the earth 4.5 times.
• Crayola crayon boxes are printed in eleven languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

  "Crayola" is a registered trademark of Binney & Smith, Inc.

Cream of Tartar

• Cream of Tartar is derived from argol, the crude tartar sediment deposited on the sides of casks during winemaking.
• Cream of Tartar is also called potassium bitartrate and has the chemical formula KHC4H4O6
• Cream of Tartar is also used to manufacture baking soda, to tin-plate metals, and as a laxative in medicine.
• Cream of Tartar has an indefinite shelf life if kept tightly closed and stored away from heat.
• McCormick & Company obtains its supply of Cream of Tartar from Italy, where very small people crawl through the very small holes in open wine casks to scrape out the residue left after the wine has been fermented and drained out.
• McCormick & Company¹s seasonings are sold under the McCormick brand name in the eastern U.S., the Schilling brand in the West, and under the Club House label in Canada.

"McCormick" and "Schilling" are registered trademarks of McCormick & Company, Incorporated.

Frisbee®

• Frisbee was inspired by the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, founded by William Russell Frisbie.
• In the 1870s, William Russell Frisbie opened a bakery called the Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His lightweight pie tins were embossed with the family name. In the mid-1940s, students at Yale University tossed the empty pie tins as a game.
• In the 1950s, Walter Frederick Morrison, a Los Angeles building inspector determined to capitalize on Hollywood¹s obsession with UFOs, designed a lightweight plastic disk, based on the Frisbie bakery¹s pie tins, but changed the name to Flyin¹ Saucer to avoid legal hassles. Morrison sold the rights to the Wham-O Manufacturing Co. of San Gabriel, California, and on January 13, 1957, Americans were introduced to the Frisbee.

• The Frisbie Pie Company went out of business in 1958. In 1994, Mattel acquired Wham-O.
• In May 1989, Middlebury College in Vermont unveiled a bronze statue of a dog jumping to catch a Frisbee to commemorate the alleged fiftieth anniversary of the Frisbee. According to Middlebury legend, five undergraduates driving through Nebraska in 1939 suffered a flat tire. As two boys changed the tire, a third found a discarded pie tin from the Frisbie Pie Company near a cornfield and threw the circular disk in the air. Middlebury President Olin Robison told Time magazine, "Our version of the story is that it happened all over America, but it started here."
• In the United States, more Frisbee discs are sold each year than baseballs, basketballs, and footballs combined.

  "Frisbee" is a registered trademark of Mattel.
  

   

  Kiwi® Shoe Polish
  

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  • Inventor William Ramsay named the shoe polish Kiwi in honor of his wife, Annie Elizabeth Meek Ramsay, a native of Oamaru, New Zealand. The kiwi is the national bird of New Zealand, and "Kiwi" is also a nickname for a New Zealander, just as "Yankee" is a nickname for a citizen of the United States.
  • In 1906, William Ramsay, invented Kiwi "boot polish" and began marketing it in Melbourne, Australia. Ramsey would load boxes of his boot polish on his horse and wagon and sell it to ranchers to protect their boots.
  • During World War I and World War II, Kiwi shoe polish's popularity spread throughout the British Commonwealth and into the United States. A few years after World War II, the Australian company opened a manufacturing plant in Philadelphia, making only black, brown, and neutral shoe polish in tins.
  • Nearly 80 percent of all corporate executives believe that well-cared for shoes are very important to a person¹s success.
  • New Zealand is the only place kiwi birds are found in the wild.
  • As the national emblem of New Zealand, pictures of the kiwi are found on money, stamps, and coins.
  • The kiwi has wings but cannot fly. Its beak is one third the length of its body, and its nostrils are at the tip of that beak. A five-pound kiwi lays an egg that weighs just over a pound‹a record in the bird kingdom.
  • Kiwi is the best-selling shoe polish in the world.

    "Kiwi" is a registered trademark of Sara Lee Corporation.

   

  MasterCard®
  

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  • MasterCard was originally called MasterCharge. The word master implies predominance, while the word charge means to purchase on credit. The words master and card suggest the predominant credit card.
  • Shopkeepers often let regular customers charge items to their account to be paid monthly, eventually letting them pay for large purchases in monthly installments.
  • In the 1930s, oil companies offered motorists "courtesy card" to use service stations across the country, and department stores began offering customers "revolving credit."
  • In 1950, tarpaulin salesman Francis Xavier McNamara founded Diners Club, the first multipurpose credit card offered by an intermediary between the vendor and buyer, popularized by an article in The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town."
  • The Franklin National Bank in New York offered the first bank credit card in 1951. Numerous credit cards issued by independent banks quickly followed, but, by the mid-1960s, Master Charge and BankAmericard (renamed MasterCard and Visa in the 1970s) dominated the field.
  • An average of 200 million credit cards are used every day in the United States.
  • Americans charged a total of $480 billion on credit cards in 1990. That's equal to $1 million every minute.
  • The typical American credit card holder carries nine credit cards and owes over $2,000.
  • In 1983, MasterCard became the first credit card company to introduce the laser hologram on its cards to combat counterfeiting.
  • In 1988, MasterCard became the first payment card issued in the People¹s Republic of China.
  • In 1990, Citibank, the largest issuer of credit cards in America, made over $610 million in profits on its Visa and MasterCard operations, according to Spencer Nilson, editor of The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.
  • According to Consumer Reports, 80 percent of all purchasing in the United States is done on credit.
  • The magnetic strip on a MasterCard holds two or three tracks of information. The first track contains your name, expiration date, card type, and data such as your PIN and credit limit. The second track holds your account number, start date, and discretionary data. The third track holds information for ATM use.
  • The first six digits of your account number indicate the company that issued the card. The second four digits identify region and branch information. The last five digits are your account number (the last digit being a check number for security purposes).
  • As of 1994, there were 238.9 million MasterCards in circulation worldwide. 135.6 million of those were held by Americans.

  "Mastercard" is a registered trademark of Mastercard International.
  
  

  SPAM®
  

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  • SPAM, possibly a contraction of "spiced ham", was named by actor KennethDaigneau, the brother of R. H. Daigneau, a former Hormel Foods vicepresident. When other meatpackers started introducing similar products,Jay C. Hormel decided to create a catchy brand name to give his spicedham an unforgettable identity, offering a $100 prize to the person whocame up with a new name. At a New Year's Eve Party in 1936, Daigneau,suggested the name SPAM.
  • Jay C. Hormel, son of the company's founder, was determined to find ause for several thousand pounds of surplus pork shoulder. He developeda distinctive canned blend of chopped pork and ham known as Hormelspiced ham that didn't require refrigeration.
  • SPAM luncheon meat was hailed as the "miracle meat," and itsshelf-stable attributes attracted the attention of the United Statesmilitary during World War II. By 1940, 70 percent of Americans hadtried it, and Hormel hired George Burns and Gracie Allen to advertiseSPAM on their radio show.
  • On March 22, 1994, Hormel Foods Corporation celebrated the productionof its five billionth can of SPAM.
  • If laid end to end, five billion cans of SPAM would circle the earth12.5 times.
  • Five billion cans of SPAM would feed a family of four, three meals aday for 4,566,210 years.
  • 100 million pounds of SPAM were issued as a Lend-Lease staple in therations to American, Russian, and European troops during World War II,fueling the Normandy Invasion. GIs called SPAM "ham that failed thephysical." General Dwight D. Eisenhower confessed to "a few unkindwords about it - uttered during the strain of battle."
  • Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as a young woman of18 working in her family's grocery store, remembers SPAM as a "wartimedelicacy."
  • In Khrushchev Remembers, Nikita Khrushchev credited SPAM for keepingthe Soviet Army alive during World War II. "We had lost our mostfertile, food-bearing lands, the Ukraine and the Northern Caucasians. Without SPAM, we wouldn't have been able to feed our army."
  • In the 1980s, David Letterman suggested SPAM-On-A-Rope for his LateNight audience "in case you get hungry in the shower."
  • When Vernon Tejas made his solo winter ascent of Mount McKinley in1988, he took a picture of himself with a can of SPAM at the summit.
  • Hormel Foods Board Chairman R. L. Knowlton presented with a can ofSPAM to Mikhail Gorbachev in June 1990 and another can of SPAM to BorisYeltsin in June 1992.
  • The Pentagon sent approximately $2 million worth of SPAM to UnitedStates troops during the Gulf War.
  • South Koreans consider SPAM an upscale food. The Wall Street Journalreported that a Seoul executive in search of the perfect present boughtSPAM, explaining, "It is an impressive gift."
  • Anthropologist Jane Goodall and her mother once made 2,000 SPAMsandwiches for Belgian troops fleeing from their African colony.
  • SPAM can be grilled, pan-fried, broiled, sauteed, and baked, or addedto ethnic dishes, sandwiches, pasta salads, pizzas, casseroles, stir-frydishes, appetizers, and soups.
  • The Ala Moana Poi Bow in Honolulu serves SPAM musubi and SPAM, eggs,and rice.
  • The Green Midget Cafe, created by Monty Python's Flying Circus, serves"egg and SPAM; egg, bacon and SPAM; egg, bacon, sausage and SPAM; SPAM,bacon, sausage and SPAM; SPAM, egg, SPAM, SPAM, bacon and SPAM; SPAM,SPAM, SPAM, egg and SPAM; SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, bakedbeans, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, and SPAM; or lobster thermidor aux crevetteswith a mornay sauce garnished with truffle paté, brandy and a fried eggon top and SPAM."
  • Mr. Whitekeys' Fly By Night Club in Spenard, Alaska, offers Cajun SPAM,SPAM nachos, and pasta with SPAM and sun-dried tomatoes in cream sauce.
  • The winning recipes from the 1992 State Fair Best of SPAM RecipeCompetition included SPAM Mousse, SPAM Golden Harvest Clam Chowder, andSPAM Cheesecake.
  • A SPAMBURGER, "the only hamburger actually made with ham," can be madeby grilling, pan frying, or broiling a slice of SPAM, and then layeringthe slice with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and cheese on a hamburgerbun.
  • Hormel Foods' cookbook, "The Great Taste of SPAM," includes recipesfor SPAM Stew with Buttermilk Topping, SPAM Fajitas, and SPAM Strudelswith Mustard Sauce.
  • 68 state and regional fairs hold Hormel Foods-sanctioned SPAM recipecontests each year.
  • In Hawaii, Maui Mall hosts an annual SPAM cookoff.
  • Austin, Texas, has been home to the Spamorama barbecue and cookingcontest since 1974.
  • Seattle, Washington, hosts a yearly SPAM luncheon meat celebration.
  • The SPAM Jamboree, held every Fourth of July weekend in Austin,Minnesota, is the only SPAM event Hormel officially sponsors.
  • At the 1983 Spamposium, 33 self-proclaimed Spamophiles gathered fromacross the nation to deliver scholarly papers and demonstrations,including making explosives from SPAM.
  • Americans consume 113 million cans of SPAM a year.
  • The average Hawaiian eats twelve cans of SPAM a year, followed by theaverage Alaskan with six cans, and Texans, Alabamians, and Arkansanswith three cans a piece.
  • 
    "SPAM" and "SPAMBURGER" are registered trademarks of Hormel FoodsCorporation.

  
  

  Tabasco® Pepper Sauce
  

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  • Tabasco pepper sauce was named after the Tabasco River in southern Mexico by creator Edmund McIlhenny because he liked the sound of the word.
  • Tabasco pepper sauce is made from a variety of pepper called Capsicum frutescens, known for centuries in Latin America and first recorded in 1493 by Dr. Chauca, the physician on Columbus's voyage.
  • Capsicum peppers contain an alkaloid called capsaicin, a spicy compound found in no other plant.
  • In 1912, pharmacologist Wilbur Scoville devised an organoleptic test to rate the hotness of peppers. The mildest bell peppers rate zero; habaneras peppers score 200,000 to 300,000 units. Tabasco pepper sauce scores between 9,000 to 12,000 units on the Scoville scale.
  • Tabasco pepper sauce is still made much the way Edmund McIlhenny first developed the sauce. Ripe peppers are harvested, crushed, mixed with Avery Island salt, and aged in white oak barrels for up to three years. The peppers are then drained, blended with strong, all-natural vinegar, stirred for several weeks, strained, bottled, and shipped.
  • Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club produced Burlesque Opera of Tabasco in 1893 with the approval of Edmund McIlhenny's son, John Avery McIlhenny, who bought the rights to the production and had it staged in New York City.
  • In 1898, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener's troops brought Tabasco pepper sauce on their invasion of Khartoum in the Sudan.
  • In the 1920s, Fernand Petiot, an American working at Harry's Bar in Paris, created the Bloody Mary. Tabasco pepper sauce was added to the recipe in the 1930s at the King Cole Bar in New York's St. Regis Hotel.
  • In 1932, when the British government began an isolationist "Buy British" campaign, Parliament banned the purchase of Tabasco pepper sauce, popular in England since 1868 and available in the House of Commons dining rooms. The resulting protest from members of Parliament was dubbed "The Tabasco Tempest," and inevitably Tabasco pepper sauce returned to parliamentary tables. To this day Queen Elizabeth uses Tabasco pepper sauce on her lobster cocktail.
  • During the Vietnam war, the McIlhenny Company sent thousands of copies of the Charley Ration Cookbook, filled with recipes for spicing up C-rations with Tabasco pepper sauce, wrapped around two-ounce bottles of Tabasco pepper sauce in waterproof canisters.
  • President George Bush is a Tabasco pepper sauce devotee, sprinkling the pepper sauce on tuna fish sandwiches, eggs, and fried pork rinds. After receiving the Republican nomination for President in 1988, Bush handed out personalized bottles of Tabasco pepper sauce as presents for members of his family who dined with him at Arnaud's Restaurant in New Orleans. "I love hot sauce," Bush told Time magazine in 1992, "I splash Tabasco all over."
  • During Operation Desert Storm, a miniature bottle of Tabasco pepper sauce was included in one out of every three ration kits sent to troops in the Gulf. The United States military now packs Tabasco pepper sauce in every ration kit.
  • Over 100,000 people visit Avery Island each year to see Tabasco pepper sauce being made, visit the Tabasco Country Store, and descend into the island's salt mines. Each visitor receives a miniature bottle of Tabasco pepper sauce and a handful of recipes.
  • The McIlhenny Company sells more than 100 million bottles of Tabasco pepper sauce a year.
  • Tabasco pepper sauce bottles are labeled in fifteen languages and shipped to more than a hundred countries.
  • Americans use more Tabasco pepper sauce than any other nation, followed by the Japanese who sprinkle it on pizza and spaghetti.
  • The McIlhenny Company produced all its peppers on Avery Island until the late 1960s. Now more than 90 percent of the pepper crop is grown and harvested under the company's direct supervision in Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Ecuador.
  • Food critic Craig Claiborne claims that "Tabasco sauce is as basic as mother's milk."
    
  • "Tabasco" is a registered trademark of McIlhenny Company.

   

  Turtle Wax®
  

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  • While driving from Beloit, Wisconsin, company founder Benjamin Hirsch, the developer of Plastone car polish, stopped at a place named Turtle Creek, rested by a stream, and was struck by his reflection in the water. Realizing that his car polish provided a wax coating as tough as a turtle shell and as reflective as Turtle Creek, he renamed his product, Turtle Wax.
  • In 1945, with just $500, ex-magician Benjamin Hirsch set up shop in a small Chicago storefront at 2207 Chicago Avenue, where he developed Plastone Liquid Car Polish by mixing batches in a bathtub.
  • Benjamin Hirsh's wife and partner, Marie, would bottle the polish, and Ben would sell it.
  • Hirsh's best sales technique was to wax parked cars while waiting for the owner to return.
  • In the early 1950s, after a sales call in Beloit, Wisconsin, Ben Hirsh took a stroll along Turtle Creek, and shortly after Liquid Plastone Car Polish became Turtle Wax with the hard shell finish.
  • Turtle Wax, Inc., is frequently offered supplies of turtles. Former company president, Carl Schmid, would refuse these offers politely and point out that the turtles in Turtle Wax are like the horses in horse radish.
  • "Turtle Wax" is a registered trademark of Turtle Wax, Inc.

   

  
  WD-40®
  

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  • Norman Larsen, president and head chemist at the Rocket Chemical Company, developed a water displacement formula on his fortieth try, naming it WD-40.
  • The aerospace industry needed a product to eliminate moisture from electrical circuitry and to prevent corrosion on airplanes and Atlas Missile nose-cones. The newly developed WD-40 worked so well, engineers working at the Rocket Chemical Company began sneaking it out of the plant for home use on squeaky doors and stuck locks.
  • WD-40 became available to the public in 1958, and in 1961, a sweet fragrance was added to overcome the smell of the petroleum distillates. In 1969, the Rocket Chemical Company was renamed the WD-40 Company, after its only product. The WD-40 Company makes the "secret sauce," then sends it to packagers who add the solvent and propellant.
  • In 1964, John Glenn circled the earth in Friendship VII, which was covered with WD-40 from top to bottom.
  • The WD-40 Company went public on the NASDAQ exchange in 1973. The initial 300,000 shares, available at $16.50, closed that same day at $26.50.
  • WD-40 makes over a million gallons of the "secret sauce" every year.
  • WD-40 can be found in four out of five American homes. "WD-40" is a registered trademark of the WD-40 Company.

  
  

  Wrigley's Spearmint® Gum
  

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  • Wrigley's Spearmint gum is named after company founder WilliamWrigley, Jr., and the common garden mint (Mentha spicata) better knownas spearmint because of the sharp point of its leaves.
  • William Wrigley, Jr., started his career at the age of thirteen when,following his expulsion from school, his father put him to work sellingsoap door-to-door.
  • In 1891, William Wrigley, Jr., moved to Chicago to sell soap andbaking powder. At twenty-nine, he started his own business inChicago-with a wife and child and $32 in cash. When he began offeringcustomers free chewing gum by Zeno Manufacturing, customers offered tobuy the gum. So Wrigley developed his own gums, introducing Wrigley'sSpearmint and Juicy Fruit in 1893. By 1911, because of Wrigley'sinsistence on pumping huge amounts of money into advertising, Wrigley'sSpearmint had become the leading U.S. gum brand.
  • In 1915, William Wrigley, Jr. sent four free sticks of gum to everyperson listed in a U.S. phone book.
  • The spear-bodied elf character William Wrigley began using beforeWorld War I to promote Spearmint gum turned into the cheerful Wrigleygum boy of the 1960s.
  • During World War II, gum, considered an emergency ration, was alsogiven to soldiers to relieve tension and dry throats on long marches.G.I.s used chewed gum to patch jeep tires, gas tanks, life rafts, andparts of airplanes. Wrigley advertisements recommended five sticks ofgum per day for every war worker, insisting that "Factory tests show howchewing gum helps men feel better, work better."
  • William Wrigley was the first distributor to place gum next torestaurant cash registers.
  • The Wrigley family bought Catalina Island in 1919 and the ArizonaBiltmore Hotel in 1931, built the Wrigley building in Chicago in 1924,and owned the Chicago Cubs for 57 years.
  • The company did not raise the original five cent price of afive-stick package of Wrigley's Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, and Doublemintgums until 1971. Management reluctantly did so by creating a seven-stickpackage and charging a dime for it.
  • Before World War II, the basic ingredient of all chewing gum waschicle, the sap of the sapodilla tree indigenous to Central and SouthAmerica. When chicle became difficult to obtain during World War II, thegum industry developed synthetic gum bases such as polyvinyl acetate,supplied almost entirely by the Hercule Powder Company, an explosivesmanufacturer.
  • Psychiatrists have called gum chewing oral masturbation.
  • Americans chew approximately $2.5 billion worth of gum every year.
  • The average American chews 190 sticks of gum each year.
  • According to The Great American Chewing Gum Book by RobertHendrickson, if all the sticks of gum chewed in America each year werelaid end to end, it would equal a stick of gum five million miles long.That's long enough to reach the moon and back ten times.
  • Since World War II, American soldiers have been issued gum with theirK rations and survival kits.
  • William Wrigley Jr.'s grandson, William Wrigley, owns 30 percent ofthe company and serves as CEO.
  • In 1997, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company sold nearly $2 billion worth ofgum.
  • Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company has over 50 percent of the U.S. gum marketand is the number one chewing gum maker in the world.
  • Since the collapse of communism, Wrigley's sales to Eastern andCentral Europe (including the former Soviet Union) have surged about 50percent every year since 1990. The same growth rate has been achieved inChina since a Wrigley plant opened in Guangshou (the former Canton) in1993. Foreign sales now account for over 55 percent of the company'sbusiness."Wrigley" and "Wrigley's Spearmint" are registered trademarks of Wm.Wrigley Jr. Company.