• French perfumer Jacques Guerlain introduced Shalimar in 1925 after four years of experimenting with just the right blend, a mixture of jasmine, citrus, lemon, cedar, orange, rose, and vanilla. Guerlain began his training in the family perfume business at age 16, and created his first perfume, Ambre, that year. Shalimar has been in continuous production since 1925, and was the hands-down favorite of actress Rita Hayworth. • Introduced in 1929, Joy by Jean Patou now sells for $850 an ounce. The favorite perfume of Jackie Kennedy and actress Vivien Leigh, Joy requires the essential oil of 10,000 jasmine flowers hand-picked […]
October 2023
TIDBITS® Anoints you with info about perfume
by Kathy Wolfe This week, Tidbits invites you to take a whiff of these facts about the perfume industry, a $51 billion annual market world-wide, $12 billion in the U.S. alone. • We get our English word “perfume” from the Latin, “per fume,” which translates “through smoke.” Ancient Roman feasts featured the scent of oil of rose and jasmine, which was poured into fountains and filtered into the air. Early Arabians burned incense, aromatic herbs, and fragrant woods to scent their clothing. A Cuneiform tablet dated to 1200 B.C. records the first perfume maker, a Babylonian woman named Tapputi. • […]
Coco Chanel – PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING –
– PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING – Who hasn’t heard of Chanel No. 5? But how much do you know about the woman behind the scent? Follow along as Tidbits aims the spotlight at Coco Chanel. • It might seem that world-renowned fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel led an elegant, privileged life, but her beginnings were very humble. She was born in a French village in 1883 to a street peddler father and a laundress mother, one of six children. Her 32-year-old mother died when Gabrielle was 11, and her father, overwhelmed and unable to provide for the family, placed her and […]
PERIDOT: The Gem
• Here’s the recipe for the green gemstone called peridot: Melt a load of silicon until it’s runny. Beat in oxygen at the ratio of four parts oxygen to one part silicon. Fold in a generous serving of iron, and add a touch of magnesium to taste. Let cool. • Eight main elements make up Earth’s crust. The top two are oxygen and silicon. When oxygen and silicon join under heat and pressure, they form silica. There are many types of silicate minerals. The most well-known silicate is quartz, composed of pure oxygen and silicon. Quartz is the second […]
TIDBITS® Listens To MUZAK
by Janet Spencer George Owen Squier (pronounced “square”) dropped out of school at 14. He went on to revolutionize information technology through a thing called Muzak. GEORGE OWEN SQUIER • Born in 1865 in Michigan, Squier graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1887, earned a Ph.D., then joined the military, rising to become a Major General in the Signal Corps, the branch of the Army in charge of managing communications and information systems. After the war, he established a communications school for the Signal Corps and a research lab. He was particularly interested in telephones and radios, and studied […]
Stephen Foster – PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING –
– PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING – • July 4, 1826, dawned as a very special day in the life of America; the date signified, of course, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it was the day that Stephen Collins Foster was born. From a very early age, little Stephen demonstrated a talent for music, plinking away at the family piano. When the Foster family moved to Ohio aboard a steamboat, Stephen became enamored of the folk songs sung by the deck hands. • Unimpressed with Stephen’s endless tune-tinkering, his father warned him that music-making would […]
The Mojave Desert
• The 20 million acres of the Mojave Desert touch four U.S. states – California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah – but is North America’s smallest desert. • Two national parks are contained within the boundaries of the Mojave Desert – Death Valley National Park and Joshua Tree National Park, both established in 1994. More than 1.6 million tourists brave the heat every year to visit Death Valley. With 3.4 million acres, it’s the largest national park in the mainland United States. It’s the hottest and driest of all national parks, receiving less than 2 inches (5 cm) of rainfall […]
TIDBITS® Travels to some deserts
by Kathy Wolfe Every continent on Earth is home to a desert. This week, Tidbits travels to these arid ecosystems to bring the facts to our readers. • Although the word “desert” might bring to mind vast expanses of sand, only about 20% of deserts are covered by sand. • Deserts cover one-fifth of the Earth’s land area, and contain one-sixth of the world’s population. In order to be classified as a desert, an area must receive less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain per year. There are two scientific categories of deserts – arid, receiving less than 10 […]
Alexander Fleming – PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING –
– PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING – Where would the world be without the extraordinary efforts of Sir Alexander Fleming? This week, Tidbits delves into the life story of the man who discovered penicillin. • Although born to humble Scottish farmers in 1881, Alexander Fleming had high aspirations of becoming a doctor. His academic promise was noted when he was just 11 years old, and he received a scholarship to Scotland’s Kilmarnock Academy. At age 20, he entered medical school, hoping to become a surgeon. However, he was convinced by a noted British immunologist, Almroth Wright, to concentrate his efforts in bacteriology, […]
BERKELEY PIT
• In the 1870s the invention of electricity, followed by the popularity of indoor plumbing, spurred the need for copper to carry electrical current and water. A particular mountain in Butte, Montana, had a lot of copper. About 30% of the nation’s copper, and 15% of the world’s copper, was supplied by Butte in the 1880s. During World War I and World War II, demand for copper skyrocketed. Throughout decades of copper mining, what was once called “the richest hill on Earth” was transformed into the deepest lake in Montana, called the Berkeley Pit. • For decades, the mining was […]
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