Up next in 10
Condoms, 3D movies, the name Tiffany ... All of these things have been around a lot longer than you might think. On today's episode of The List Show, we're breaking down our favorite deceptively old things, from synchronized swimming to Juicy Fruit.
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
8 Things That Are Older Than You Think | Mental Floss
https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
If you're an elder millennial or a younger Gen Xer, you probably grew up with a Tiffany
0:04
or two. Or ten. Heck, maybe you're Tiffany. According to the Social Security Administration
0:10
Tiffany was America's 11th most popular baby girl name of the entire 1980s
0:15
which might make it seem like a pretty recent invention. But people have actually been christening
0:19
their babies Tiffany for centuries. The moniker derives from the Greek Theophania, meaning
0:24
the appearance of God. Theophania became the old French Tiffé, which showed up in English
0:29
circa 1200. Baptism records for babies named Tiffany date as far back as the 1500s. But
0:36
because the late 20th century birthed so many Tiffany's, it just feels wrong whenever a
0:41
character named Tiffany appears in a period piece set long before then. In a 2008 interview
0:46
author Joe Walton dubbed this phenomenon the Tiffany Problem. Basically, a lot of historically
0:50
accurate things seem anachronistic because they don't match our perception of history
0:55
Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, Editor-in-Chief of MentalFloss.com. This episode of The List Show is devoted to all of the stuff that's been around for way longer than you might have thought
1:04
from 3D movies to condoms and everything in between. Let's get started
1:14
On June 10, 1915, patrons filed into New York City's Astor Theater to witness a landmark moment in film history
1:21
It was the first 3D movie ever shown in a theater. Technically, it was three shorts. First, some rural shots from across America, then some
1:30
footage from a movie set, and for the grand finale, a trip to Niagara Falls. Audience
1:35
members donned red and green glasses to get the full 3D experience, achieved by combining
1:40
sets of images captured two and a half inches apart. The first 3D feature film to hit theaters was The Power of Love, which debuted at The
1:46
Ambassador in Los Angeles in September 1922. One experiment of the time was cutting edge
1:51
even for today, allowing viewers to choose between two conclusions. Look through one
1:56
lens for a happy ending and the other for a sad one. There's a free idea for James Cameron
2:02
Make Avatar 3 a choose-your-own-adventure. Synchronized swimming was a vaudeville fad that found its way to the silver screen during
2:08
Hollywood Golden Age Picture Esther Williams in films like Million Dollar Mermaid and Bathing Beauty In fact the phrase synchronized swimming wasn even coined until 1934 when the modern mermaids wowed the crowd at the World Fair in Chicago The sport didn become an Olympic event
2:25
until 1984, which is now called artistic swimming. But it turns out that ancient Romans enjoyed
2:31
a good water ballet on at least one occasion. Only, it didn't take place in a pool, per
2:36
se. Instead, they just flooded an amphitheater. The first-century poet Martial described the
2:42
performance in a series of epigrams, translated by Kathleen Coleman in 2006. A well-trained
2:47
troop of Nereids was frolicking all over the surface and decorating the compliant water
2:51
with various formations. These included a menacing trident, a star shining its welcome
2:57
to sailors, and a ship with broad sails billowing in distinctive folds. Not everyone is convinced
3:03
that that is synchronized swimming, thinking it might instead be dancing in the water
3:08
But still, that routine would probably score well at today's Olympics and would definitely
3:12
impress your local community pool. Oreos aren't quite so ancient, but they have been around for way longer than you've been
3:19
dunking them in the milk of your choice. The optimal dunk time for an Oreo is roughly 3 seconds
3:25
According to a 2016 study by Utah State University researchers, the cookie absorbs roughly 80
3:31
of its potential liquid after 2 seconds, and it maxes out after 4
3:36
So keeping it submerged any longer than that won't earn you more milk in each mouthful
3:41
But the cookie will get progressively soggier, of course, which is maybe what you're going for anyway
3:47
When the Oreo first hit shelves in 1912, it wasn't marketed as a dunkable sensation that
3:52
belonged in every kid's lunchbox. It was way more of a luxury. Here's how one ad from that
3:57
year described the dessert. A dainty, tasty chocolate biscuit with cream filling. Very
4:03
expensive, but oh, how good. At 45 cents per pound, expensive was no exaggeration. That's about $14
4:09
in today's money, which is only considered a steal if you're buying Lady Gaga's limited edition
4:14
Oreos on eBay. Speaking of storied American snacks, Juicy Fruit Gum arrived on the scene in the 90s
4:21
The 1890s, that is. It was the brainchild of William Wrigley Jr., who initially sold soap
4:26
He gave out baking powder with every soap order, which was so popular that he started selling
4:31
baking powder That came with a freebie too Chewing gum And then the gum was such a hit that he started selling that instead What can I say the man loved a business pivot and a free gift with purchase especially one that had nothing to do with the purchase itself and everything to do
4:45
with what the purchaser might want. You know, a coffee grinder, a cheese cutter
4:51
maybe some lace curtains for the buyer's wife. Why do I get the feeling that Wrigley was just
4:55
bargaining off all of his own belongings? Anyway, Wrigley introduced Juicy Fruit Gum
4:59
to the public in 1893 at the World's Fair in Chicago, and the rest is history. Well, except
5:05
for the actual flavor of the gum, which is still top secret. When it comes to making music, it
5:10
doesn't get much more basic than banging a metal disc. So it's not hard to believe that symbols
5:15
have been around for thousands of years. The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses one dated
5:19
between 2300 to 2000 BCE, during the early Bronze Age. You get one chance to guess what it's made of
5:27
Yeah, it's bronze. What's more surprising is that Zilgion, one of today's leading symbol manufacturers
5:33
has been in the game for four centuries. In Constantinople in 1618, a 22-year-old Armenian chemist named Avedis was trying to make gold
5:41
when he accidentally concocted the perfect metal alloy for making symbols instead
5:45
It's some combination of copper, tin, and silver, but the exact recipe is just like juicy fruits
5:51
Confidential, I mean, not citrusy. The Ottoman Empire commissioned Avedis to craft the royal symbols
5:56
and was so pleased with his work that he was given a special surname, Tiffany
6:01
Just kidding, it was Zilgian, meaning family of symbol makers. So Avedis Zilgian went off and founded his own foundry in 1623
6:09
and eventually taught his son all his symbol making secrets. Things more or less continued like that for the next 15 generations of Zilgians
6:16
It's still a family business today. The current president and executive chair is Craigie Zilgian
6:21
who also served as CEO from 1999 to 2019. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm personally fine with nepo babies and the cymbal industry
6:30
Get off your high horse, LaCroix. Sparkling water existed in natural mineral springs for thousands of years before humans
6:36
finally figured out how to make their own. For that, we have pig bladders to thank
6:40
That's what English chemist Joseph Priestley used in the late 1760s as part of a contraption
6:45
that combined gas bubbles with water. Priestley didn't do it out of thin air
6:49
There was over a century of discoveries and innovations leading up to his contraption
6:52
but we really like viewing history in terms of one dude did something so historians tend to treat Priestley as sparkling water first man He detailed his process in a 1772 paper called
7:03
Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air. I probably would have gone with a different verb
7:09
but that's just me. The pig bladder turned out to be kind of a problem. To put it frankly
7:14
some people thought Priestley's impregnated water tasted like pee. One such critic was John
7:19
Knuth, who unveiled his own seltzer maker just a couple years later. Priestley was initially
7:23
disgruntled about the Uranus allegations. He even implied that one of Knuth's assistants might have
7:28
been peeing in the water before Knuth ran it through Priestley's machine. But eventually
7:33
even Priestley acknowledged that Knuth's mostly glass apparatus was better than his
7:38
So the next time you crack open a cold seltzer, cheers to pig bladders. Or the absence of them in
7:43
today's carbonation techniques. While we're on animal bladders, let's talk about condoms
7:48
According to Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete was cursed with semen full of snakes and scorpions
7:54
Needless to say, this was pretty dangerous for his sexual partners, and it also prevented his wife, Pasiphae, from getting pregnant
8:01
So in one version of the story, they use a goat's bladder to catch the scorpions, and everyone is happy
8:07
Sure, this is technically a legend, and nobody knows for certain if King Minos ever existed
8:12
But as historian Vernal Bolo wrote in his 2001 Encyclopedia of Birth Control
8:17
it seems logical to argue that what appeared in mythology reflected, in part, reality
8:22
and barriers of one kind or another made from bladders might well have been used by the Greeks
8:26
and probably their Roman successors. The oldest condoms that archaeologists have actually unearthed
8:31
aren't that different from Minos' legendary goat bladder. Excavated from beneath England's
8:36
Dudley Castle in the 1980s, they were dated to the 1640s and made from fish and other animal
8:42
intestines. Archaeologist Stephanie Ratkay told UPI that they look like leaves of brown
8:47
paper, and at first we thought they were parchment. But that's not the only old condom discovered
8:52
In Sweden, a reusable condom was found that had an instruction manual. According to the
8:57
directions, soaking it in warm milk before each use would prevent disease. Not something
9:02
we recommend. At all. Ever. Under any circumstances. That's it for us here today. Next time you eat a piece of juicy fruit with your friend
9:10
Tiffany while taking in a 3D movie, well, just know that someone a long time ago could
9:14
have been doing the same thing
#education