Sunday, March 21, 2010

toothpaste and padded bras

strange bedfellow, toothpaste and padded bras, but for me there is a wierd connection or story behind the title.

My wife, Nancy, and I like cinnamon flavored toothpaste that comes in a square container.  It really is not square but more like a thin rectangle.  It is easy to stand on its end and it is easy to get all of the toothpaste out.  There is little or no waste and it is easy to keep clean.

Nancy was telling me that she is having a hard time finding these containers and she heard that they are no longer making them because consumers do not waste as much paste as they do when using the squeeze tubes.  The bottom line is that the toothpaste companies make more money on the tubes.

I decided to google "toothpaste" and see if I could verify what she had heard.  I was not able to find an answere one way or the  other but I did find a site that tells when and why different items were invented.  It is an interesting site.

After reading about toothpaste tubes my eye caught "padded bras"  I was absolutely sure I knew why padded bras were invented.  However, I was absolutely wrong. 
Here is how the story goes:

INVENTOR: D.J. Kennedy, G.B.

YEAR: 1929


HOW INVENTED: Learning that in the 1928 Oslo, Norway, Olympics, Sweden's foremost female athlete, Lois Lung, had lost the women's 400-meter hurdle when her knee had hit one breast on the last barrier and brought her writhing to the cinder path in pain, Kennedy conceived of a protective or padded brassiere.

Kennedy's Patent No. 324,870 reads: "Breast Pads for protecting the breasts from injuries resulting from athletic sports. The garment combines 2 groups of annular [ring-shaped] rubber tubes of progressively decreasing diameters arranged in conical form and connected to each other so that when the tubes are inflated a connection of air may pass from one breast pad to the other. The 2 sets of tubes are covered with leather." Little could Kennedy know that his invention would thrive not for its use as a safety measure but for its use as the deception popularly known as falsies.

A little history trivia is always fun.

Enjoy

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