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Tea bags, matches, kilts, and so much more. On this episode of The List Show, we're breaking down inventions, foods, and even words that are much more recent than you'd expect. Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Discord: https://discord.io/mentalfloss Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 26 Things That Are Younger Than You Think | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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In 1966, the National Academy of Sciences released a paper that led to two amazing inventions
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paramedics and 911. The paper reported that an American soldier in the Vietnam War would be more
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likely to survive a serious wound than someone on a city street because there was such a poor
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emergency response system at home. At the time, if someone had an at-home emergency
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they could dial the police or the local funeral home for a ride to the hospital
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But those drivers weren't trained for any on-scene treatment. The NAS paper inspired
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an anesthesiologist in Pittsburgh to create a paramedic course. The first trained paramedics
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were a group of local black men who worked for an organization that delivered food. They learned how
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to handle some common medical events and started driving for emergencies instead. Before 911
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which was also created as a result of the NAS paper, people had to take the time to dial a full
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seven-digit phone number for help. In 1968, the first 911 call was placed. The number was chosen
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in part because it hadn't been used for an area code yet, and it didn't take long to dial on a
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rotary phone. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, Editor-in-Chief of Mental Floss, and on this episode of The List
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Show, we're going to talk about a bunch of things that are younger than you might think
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Paramedics and 911 are just the beginning. Let's get started. Staying on the topic of emergency services, we didn't have CPR as we know it until 1960. People
1:22
were already aware that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation could save lives, but researchers paired that with chest compression in the first-ever modern paper on CPR. They had discovered its
1:31
effectiveness while studying heart defibrillation on dogs. Nowadays, it wouldn't be an election
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without TV channels showing big maps that change colors when a candidate wins a state—red for
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Republican and blue for Democrat. But those colors weren't always synonymous with those particular
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parties. NBC debuted the first electoral map in 1976. At the time, they used blue for states that
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voted for Republican Gerald Ford and red for Democrat Jimmy Carter, based on how Britain did
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it. Other networks started using maps for their coverage in subsequent elections. But there was
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little consistency in color until 2000, when, according to Smithsonian, The New York Times
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and USA Today both used color maps featuring red for Bush and blue for Gore. Why? The New York
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Times pretty much felt both red and Republican started with R, while a USA Today editor explained
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that it was what everyone else was doing. Anyway, since the 2000 recount in Florida lasted about 10
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billion years, those maps kept showing up on screens and in papers, and as a result
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we now have the terms red state and blue state to symbolize states that vote largely Republican
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or Democrat respectively You wouldn want to have painted a room before 1930 Or if you me you still don want to paint a room because my arms get so tired But anyway until that point there was no masking tape It was patented by 3M employee Richard Drew who was inspired when he went to an auto body shop and heard the workers cursing about
2:47
their solution to painting two-tone cars, gluing paper to the areas they didn't want to paint
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It was messy and stuck to the car, and Drew thought there had to be a better solution
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And thus, the idea of masking tape was born. Drew also invented scotch transparent tape in 1930
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A real tape mastermind, that guy. Another 3M product, the Post-it Note, was released in 1980
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Sadly, it wasn't invented by Romy or Michelle. It was another 3M employee, Spencer Silver, who'd actually become somewhat of a company
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nuisance for constantly talking about his microspheres that were sticky but also removable
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He came up with them in 1968. And in 1974, a colleague who sang in a choir approached him
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He'd been using bookmarks in his songbooks, but they tended to fall out. so he saw the brilliance in a substance that could stick, but also be removed without wear
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and tear. Before long, Post-it came along. Before paper clips, people had to secure multi-page documents with a straight pin. It was not
3:40
flexible, left holes in papers, and honestly, sounds kind of dangerous. But in the late
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19th century, the first paper clip came on the scene because a type of bendy wire had
3:48
been invented that made them possible. The most popular early model was known as a gem clip
3:53
Sunglasses had predecessors throughout history. All over the globe, there are examples of
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ancient individuals looking through tinted glass or other materials to reduce glare from the sun
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But sunglasses didn't become a commonly worn accessory until the 1930s. And thank goodness
4:06
they did because I look so cool wearing them. Karate also had plenty of ancient predecessors
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but it mainly evolved from a martial arts style out of the then-independent Ryukyu Kingdom
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Surprisingly, though, it didn't become the karate we know today, with the white uniforms
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colored belts, and rankings until the 1920s in Japan, and it really started spreading even later
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after World War II. Bread feels like it's been around for, well, forever. But not so in the case
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of ciabatta bread. It seems like the kind of bread that some ancient Italian peasants ate
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but it turns out it was invented in 1982 when Arnaldo Cavallari took advantage of his family's
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flour mill to experiment with baking. Why did he take on this mission? He reportedly wanted to
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compete with the French baguette, which he was totally appalled had started becoming popular in
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Italy. Mamma mia. There's a little debate about the origins of chicken tikka masala, but the most widespread
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explanation you'll see is that it was invented by a chef who ran a restaurant in Scotland
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in the 1970s. The story goes that a customer complained that the chicken tikka was too
5:07
dry, so the restaurant owner whipped up a sauce from spices, cream, and tomato soup
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Whether that true or the dish had already been around for decades as some claim this version certainly helped increase its popularity and some call it the first instance of fusion cuisine 401ks weren even possible until Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1978 The retirement
5:27
plans are actually named after Section 401k of the Internal Revenue Code, which allowed
5:32
company employees to tax-defer bonuses or stock options. A benefits consultant named Ted Bena
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realized that this could be utilized by corporations for a new type of retirement plan. By 1983
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In 2003, over 7 million people had a 401k. Another product of the 70s is the at-home pregnancy test
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Before these went to market, women had to go to a doctor's office or clinic to get tested
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The first at-home test wasn't totally easy. It involved a test tube, purified water, a sheep's red blood cells, and a mirror for
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you to read the results on the bottom of the tube. But still, it allowed women to figure out whether they were pregnant on their own terms
6:03
It was even marketed as a private little revolution. We tend to think of Machu Picchu as this very ancient archaeological site
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it's actually from 1420, which means it's younger than the Tower of London, the Leaning
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Tower of Pisa, and Notre Dame. Gutenberg's printing press is just a couple of decades
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younger. If you watched Braveheart, which takes place in the 13th century and features
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characters wearing kilts, you might think that kilts are older than they are. The traditional
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Scottish belted plaid was worn starting in the 16th century. It's a large piece of fabric
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that gets wrapped like a kilt, but a piece also goes over the upper body. The kilt as
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a separate piece of fabric started to be worn in the 17th century. And while we're on comparison
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and points, a match that you light with friction is technically younger than the lighter. In 1826
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chemist John Walker had a stick that was covered in chemicals, something I really recommend you
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don't try at home. But he did, and he realized that he could create fire when he moved it across
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his hearth. Lighters, on the other hand, date back to 1823. The origins of the High Five are debated
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Some say it started with volleyball players in the 1960s. Others attribute it to the LA Dodgers
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baseball team in the late 1970s, or a University of Louisville basketball team around the same time
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Magic Johnson even claimed to have invented it at one point. But what we do know is that
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high-fiving surprisingly didn't take off until the early 1980s, despite the low five
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being around since at least World War II. Another sporty invention is the sports bra
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which only came to be in 1977, right around when jogging took off. Three female friends realized
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they needed a more supportive bra and set out to solve the problem. Their first prototype was two
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jock straps sewn together, which inspired its original name, Jock Bra. Eventually it became Jog
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and in 1990 the company was acquired by Playtex Apparel. More corporate acquisitions landed at the sportswear brand Champion
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And Champion used to be called Knickerbocker Knitting Company, which started making hooded sweatshirts back in the 1930s
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You may be thinking well that not younger than I would expect But maybe the word hoodie is It had its first known use in the year 1990 In the 1940s inventor N Joseph Woodland came up with the idea for a barcode
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He was inspired by Morse code's dots and dashes to create the lines of an early barcode prototype
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But he was a bit ahead of the technology, so the idea didn't go anywhere fast. All the way in 1974
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the first item with a universal product code, or a UPC, was scanned at a supermarket checkout
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The head of research and development for Marsh Supermarkets handed a juicy fruit chewing gum
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to a cashier, who scanned it for purchase in a ceremonial event. Marsh cannot claim the title
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of First Supermarket, by the way. Piggly Wiggly can. The first Piggly Wiggly opened in 1916 in
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Memphis, Tennessee. While not the first store that allowed customers to select products for themselves
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instead of relying on a store clerk to retrieve them, Piggly Wiggly scientifically systemized
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and standardized their stores, while also requiring people to walk past every item in the store to get
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out. The company also pioneered shopping baskets. It wasn't until 1937 that we got shopping carts
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which first appeared at Humpty Dumpty grocery stores. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine grocery
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stores being a novelty, but in 1957, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited America
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and just had to take a 15 minute trip to check one out. We have a word puzzle dating back to at least 62 CE, so it's surprising that the simple
9:07
crossword wasn't invented until 1913. Newspaper editor Arthur Wynn was scrambling for something
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to fill the Sunday paper in the New York world. He threw together a diamond puzzle for readers to
9:16
fill in answers. The New York World could have patented it, but decided not to because they
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didn't want to pay, which would have cost around $100. The puzzles took off, and Wynn eventually
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became overwhelmed, and the job was pawned off onto Margaret Petherbridge. She's the one who
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really turned crosswords into what they are today, with the lists of across and down clues. The word
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search is also pretty new, just dating back to the 1960s. And finally, it seems like someone
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should have figured out the convenience of putting loose tea in a bag and dunking that in hot water
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a lot earlier than 1901. And they did. Despite what you see in most blogs and YouTube videos
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that talk about some serendipitous early 20th century discovery, people in the 19th century
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definitely were using tea bags, with one 1883 coffeehouse journal explaining that the best
10:01
way to make tea was to place the tea in a muslin or other bag. When the water is boiling
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vigorously, place the bag in the kettle and wait. For 15 to 20 minutes. Which sounds utterly
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undrinkable. Anyway, people in Japan were also using teabags in the 19th century at the latest
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But what is younger are commercial teabags, which started to take off in America in the late 1910s
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and early 1920s. But as late as 1970, only accounted for 10% of the British tea market
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That's it for this episode of The List Show. Let us know what topic you'd like to see next
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Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time
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