Did you know…?
Post-it® notes were invented in church.
In 1968, a researcher for 3M, Dr. Spencer Silver, was trying to create a super-strong glue. After many attempts, the glue he ended up with did stick to surfaces, but it was too weak to hold anything substnatial and was too easy to remove. He tried to find some market use for the super-weak glue, but no one knew what to do with it.
That is, until one Sunday, four years later.
Another 3M scientist, Arthur Fry, was in church, singing with the choir. He had been using small pieces of paper as markers in his hymnal, but he was being driven crazy by them constantly falling out. It was then that he remembered Silver’s weak glue and the idea dawned on him to put it on the back of his hymnal markers. Sure enough, the super-weak glue allowed the markers to stay in place and be easily removed. The Post-it® note was born. 3M started marketing Post-it® notes in 1980 and they are now one of the most common office supplies available.
Did you also know…?
- Potpourri
- Sweden once had two Leaps Days in one year.
- Doorways make you forget.
- In the wrong hands, one Christmas custom can bring a whole lot of bad luck.
- Because of a printer’s error, one edition of the Bible went from pious to downright wicked.
- Singing “Happy Birthday to You” in public can land you in jail.
- According to Italian space trackers, there are cosmonauts stranded in space.
- In Denmark, it is illegal to name your child Apple.
- A small strait off the coast of Wales is the scene of the strangest coincidence ever recorded.
- The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
- Nutmeg can kill you.
- A Frenchman once ate an entire airplane.
- Shakespeare wrote the first knock-knock joke.
- In fifteenth-century Britain, people were banned from wearing buttons.
- The fear of Friday the 13th is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia.
- The Mayflower set sail from Devonshire, England, on this day—in 1957.
- There is no need to be wary of Ides.
- The word “Abracadabra” was originally used to cure malaria.
- Post-it® notes were invented in church.