Firsts by Wilson Casey Read Free Book Online

developed the first ready-to-eat breakfast cereal. Granula, as Jackson called it, was graham flour dough baked into dry loaves, broken into chunks, baked again, and then ground into still smaller pieces. But it was far from convenient like today’s breakfast cereals. It had to be soaked overnight before it was possible to chew the dense, bran-heavy nuggets.
    In 1887, the next generation of breakfast cereals caught on when John Harvey Kellogg, operator of the Battle Creek (Michigan) Sanatorium, invented a ground wheat, oat, and cornmeal biscuit for his patients suffering from bowel problems. Kellogg initially called his cereal Granula but later changed the name to Granola after a lawsuit. His brother Will Kellogg later invented corn flakes and went on to found the Kellogg Company in 1906. By the 1930s, Kellogg’s had invented the first puffed cereal and soon afterward introduced shredded cereal.

Breaking the Sound Barrier
    In 1934, the first rocket of notable record broke the sound barrier. The ARS-4 was launched by the American Rocket Society from Marine Park, Staten Island, New York, on September 9, 1934. The unmanned rocket had a single thrust chamber with four angled nozzles. Its flight reached a speed over 700 miles per hour, a height of 400 feet, and a horizontal range of 1,600 feet. The ARS-4 rocket ended up in New York Bay. The American Rocket Society, originally founded on April 4, 1930, as the American Interplanetary Society, was a pioneer in designing and testing liquid-fuelled rockets and trail-blazed the path to the U.S. space program.

Brick
    The first known bricks date to 7500 B.C.E. early Mesopotamia and were made from sun-dried clay mud in the Upper Tigris area of southeastern Turkey. Clay from deposits around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was mixed with straw, shaped into individual bricklike units, and sun-dried (similar to the way kids make mud pies). These first mud bricks did not stand up to the tough weather conditions and were in constant need of repair when used to construct primitive shelter. The first fired (cooked or heated) bricks were produced in the third millennium B.C.E. in Neolithic Jericho and were a much better product. The fired bricks meant more permanent buildings could be constructed in areas with high rainfall or with cold or very hot weather.

Broadway Musical
    The earliest American musical for which a complete score and libretto survived was The Archers, also called The Mountaineers of Switzerland. It premiered in New York City on April 18, 1796, and ran for three performances at the John Street Theatre, east of Broadway. The Archers was a comic opera by librettist William Dunlap and composer Benjamin Carr. The musical was adapted from Friedrich von Schiller’s William Tell legend and contrasted ideas of liberty and anarchy. It followed its initial three-performance run with two nights in Boston.

Bubble Gum
    In 1928, the first marketable bubble gum was invented by 23-year-old Walter E. Diemer, an accountant with the Fleer chewing gum company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Diemer spent his spare time playing around with new gum recipes and explained, in a 1996 interview with the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, “I was doing something else and ended up with something with bubbles.” Pink was the one and only shade of food coloring he had nearby, so his new bubble gum became pink. It was less sticky than regular chewing gum and also stretched more easily. Diemer carried a 5-pound glop of his new gum to a grocery store and conducted demonstrations. It sold out in a single afternoon, and before long, the Fleer chewing gum company was marketing and selling Diemer’s creation, calling it Dubble Bubble.

Buddhist Monastery
    Around 500 B.C.E., King Bimbisara of Magadha in India donated the great Veluvana Garden as a monastic dwelling to the future Buddha and the Order of Sangha. The Buddha humbly accepted the bamboo grove park because he wanted a residence that was secluded and quiet