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Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Mar 28, 2011
March 28, 2011
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He's dead, Jim:
The inventor of Super Glue has died.
HARRY COOVER, Jr, was working for Eastman Kodak, when he discovered the adhesive by accident back in 1951. An assistant was upset that some brand new refractometer prisms were ruined when they were glued together by a substance called Cyanoacrylate.
Cyanoacrylate was the chemical name for the glue first uncovered in 1942 by military scientists searching for materials to make clear plastic gun sights for World War II. The compound stuck to everything, so they rejected by it. What the assistant in 1951 saw as a disaster, Coover and another researcher recognized as a super adhesive glue. They perfected the product, finally hitting the market in 1958. The rest is history.
Coover died Saturday at his home in Kingsport, TN. He was 94.
Editor's note: His remains will be hung from a yellow construction helmet glued on on an I-beam for public viewing. (Maiman)Anniversaries:
with the nuclear problems going on in Japan these days, it seems only appropriate to mention that America's worst commercial nuclear accident occurred inside the Unit Two reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, PA, on this date in 1979.
--Gatorade is celebrating is 46th anniversary this week. In case you didn't know, the first of the so-called "energy drinks" was originally developed at the University of Florida to quench the thirst of Gator football players (1965). The Gators football team first used Gatorade during the 1967 season and went on to win their first Orange Bowl title, beating Georgia Tech, whose coach, Bobby Dodd --when asked why they lost-- replied: "We didn't have Gatorade. That made the difference." Gatorade used to come in glass bottles until 1998, when they switched to plastic. The first Gatorade "dunking" by a pro football team was during the 1986 season, when the NY Giants made a practice of it after wins under (then) head coach BILL PARCELLS.Gossip Central: tabloids:
LINDSAY LOHAN is doing her part to help the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. A pic in this weeks Star magazine shows LiLo wearing earrings from RichRocks, a company donating 20 percent of their proceeds from the sale of those earrings to the American Red Cross.
Editor's note: I'm sorry, someone HAS to ask it --did she actually PAY for those earrings? (Myers)Why doesn't this ever happen to us?:
IRVING PRZYBORSKI (priz-BOR-skee) from Chicago started to do his taxes last Thursday and out popped a year-old lottery ticket.
He checked out the number and it said: Winner. See clerk.
He saw the clerk, who told him it was worth $9 million.
Even freakier: The ticket was set to expire the same day he realized it was a winner.
If Przyborski hadn't claimed his winnings by midnight, the money would've gone into the state's Common School Fund. According to WBBM News Radio, about $2 million in unclaimed winnings a month go into that fund, most from much smaller prizes than Przyborski's. (Maiman)Chic Sh*t:
CNET reports the French fashion house Hermes (air-MESS) has created two cases for the new Apple iPad2 that cost more than the iPad2 itself! Both are made from the finest calfskin leather and embossed with the Hermes logo but the Hermes Swift is a slip case that retails for $820 while the Hermes Station is a folder like cover that doubles as a iPad stand, and goes for $1,400. (Kaye)
Grace notes:
That school MADONNA was going to build in Malawi is not going to happen, and the Material Mom is not too happy about it. The Page Six gossip column in the New York Post says Madonna's Raising Malawi charity may take legal action against its executive director, Philippe van den Bossche. He allegedly spent some of the 11-million dollars Madonna and her partners loaned to the organization on huge salaries, office space, a golf club membership, housing, a car and a driver. Madonna's original plan was to build a 15-million dollar school for 400 girls in the African nation of Malawi, but the project was abandoned before it broke ground. The New York Times reported last night that eight workers at the Malawi charity are suing Madonna for unfair dismissal and for non-payment of benefits. (Marino)
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