July 7, 1928 – Today was the day the first loaf of sliced bread was sold commercially. The bread came from the Chillicothe Baking Company, in Chillicothe, Missouri, and the innovation was thanks to a determined engineer named Otto Rohwedder.
The machine that Rohwedder created not only sliced the bread, but it also wrapped it.
Rohwedder had conceived of the [...]
July 5, 1946 – Skimpy two-piece outfits have been around for thousands of years, but today was the day the modern “bikini” made its debut.
A French car engineer named Louis Réard was working in his mother’s lingerie boutique. Fashion designer Jacques Heim had just introduced what he called the world’s “smallest bathing suit.” The bottom [...]
June 8, 1959 – Just before noon on this day the U.S. Navy submarine USS Barbero surfaced off the northern coast of Florida. It took careful aim at the mainland and launched a customized cruise missile in which the nuclear warhead had been replaced with a bunch of postcards. Twenty minutes later, the missile [...]
