5 things that are as old as Mickey Mouse
Is Mickey Mouse the best thing since sliced bread? Or is sliced bread the best thing since Mickey Mouse?
It’s actually a close call since both made their debut in 1928.
As we get ready to celebrate Mickey’s 95th birthday Nov. 18, we’d like to tip a hat to five other things that came on the scene in 1928:
Sliced bread
The first bread-slicing machine was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa. Rohwedder had built a prototype years earlier, but it was destroyed in a fire in 1912. It wasn’t until 1928 that he had a working machine ready. When the first commercially available sliced bread was sold that year, it was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Fun fact: Sliced bread was briefly banned in 1943 as a wartime conservation measure.
Penicillin
Imagine a world without antibiotics, where an infection from something as small as a splinter could kill. Illnesses like strep throat and pneumonia were routinely fatal. The discovery of penicillin, the first naturally occurring antibiotic, changed all of that. The discovery is credited to Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. Penicillin made a huge difference during World War II, when doctors finally had a way to treat infections from bullet wounds — as well as rampant venereal disease. Penicillin wasn’t made available for public use in the United States until 1945.
The Oxford English dictionary
The first — and still the most important — historical dictionary of the English language was completed in 1928. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, and its first sections were published in 1884. The first edition of the full dictionary was published in 10 volumes in 1928. Almost immediately, more supplements were issued. The second edition of the OED, which contained 20 volumes, was published in 1989. The OED is continually updated; just this summer, the terms binge-watch, impostor syndrome and silent generation were added.
Kool-Aid
The drink so many of us remember from our childhoods was invited by Edwin Perkins in his mother’s kitchen in Hastings, Neb. Perkins was trying to reduce shipping costs associated with a liquid drink concentrate. The result? the first powdered soft drink mix to be sold nationally in stores. To this day, Hastings has a Kool-Aid Days festival every August, and Kool-Aid is Nebraska’s official state soft drink. Ironically, today you can find Kool-Aid liquid concentrate in the grocery store.
The first TV set
Where would Mickey Mouse be without the television set? It makes sense that both came on the scene at the same time. There are a lot of milestone dates in the history of television, including its first patent, which was issued in Germany in 1884. But the first commercially available TV set went on the market in the United States in 1928, with a price tag of $75 — about $1,068 in today’s dollars. Its screen was partly mechanical, with a spinning disc and a neon lamp that produced an image smaller than a business card. That same year, the first television station went on the air — WRGB broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY. It would be another 11 years before TV would really take the world by storm when it was demonstrated at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
