Strange But True

A single share of Coca-Cola stock, purchased in 1919, when the company went public, would have been worth $92,500 in 1997.

Americans consume 42 tons of Aspirin per day.

Americans spend more than $5 billion a year on cosmetics, toiletries, beauty parlors and barber shops.

Bayer was advertising cough medicine containing Heroin in 1898.

Carbonated soda water was invented in 1767 by Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen.

Cheerios cereal was originally called Cheerioats.

Chewing gum was patented in 1869 by William Semple.

Coca-Cola was so named back in 1885 for its two medicinal ingredients: extract of coca leaves and kola nuts. As for how much cocaine was originally in the formula, it's hard to know.

Cocaine used to be sold to cure sore throat, neuralgia, nervousness, headache, colds and sleeplessness in the 1880s.

During the Prohibition, at least 1565 Americans died from drinking bad liquor, hundreds were blinded, and many were killed in bootlegger wars. Federal agents and the Coast Guard made 75,000 arrests per year.

False eyelashes were invented by film director D.W. Griffith while he was making the 1916 epic, "Intolerance." He wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks.

For two years, during the 1970s, Mattel marketed a doll called "Growing Up Skipper". Her breasts grew when her arm was turned.

Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators, where it was first developed.

Hershey's Kisses are called that, because the machine that makes them looks like its kissing the conveyor belt.

The ball-point pen was invented by two hungarian brothers: Georgo and Lazlo Biro.

If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom, over and over again.

In 1965, LBJ enacted a law requiring cigarette manufacturers to put health warnings on their packages.

In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting out advertising space on his cows.

In 4000 BC Egypt, men and women wore glitter eye shadow made from the crushed shells of beetles. Men and women walked around topless, and marriages between brothers and sisters were not uncommon in the Royal families. Cleopatra was married to her older brother, until he drowned in the Nile. Then she married her 11-year-old younger brother.

In the 1700s, European women achieved a pale complexion by eating "Arsenic Complexion Wafers", which contained the actual poison.


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