Hey, Joy.
Joy, you in here?
Oh, there you are.
Listen, you will not believe what happened to me today.
Why are you resting your face against the microphone like it's a pillow?
And why is there dew on your cheek?
And why are you wearing a blue satin eye mask with the words Quiet Please embroidered on it?
Hang on.
Are you asleep in the studio?
Uh-oh.
I guess you forgot we were supposed to tape an episode today.
Joy, time to wake up.
Open those peepers.
It's a beautiful day.
Wow, you're a deep sleeper.
Let's try this.
Joy!
Wakey, wakey.
Eggs and bakey.
I'm scared of the ponies.
Pedas of goldfish.
Peanut butter bologna sandwich.
Hmm, this is serious.
Okay, come on in, everybody.
And a one, and a two, and a three.
Oh, hey, Asa.
Is it time for marching band practice already?
Are you okay?
You seem really tired.
I was just resting my eyes.
I must have fallen asleep.
I had a super busy weekend.
Joy, it's Wednesday.
I know.
That's how busy it was.
It was literally the most exciting jam-packed fun-filled glitter cannon rainbow, unicorn weekend ever.
I had a sleepover with ten of my best friends and all their pets, made a triple-layer coconut crumb cheesecake with extra crumb, went whitewater rafting, judged a taco-eating contest and finished writing my memoir.
A Joy to Behold The Joydolo Story.
Whoa.
No wonder you're exhausted.
Wait, what's that furry lump on your shoulder?
This is Kevin Bacon.
The actor?
No, Kevin Bacon, my pet guinea pig.
I was supposed to take him last weekend to see that new coming-of-age teen drama.
Are You There, God?
It's Me, Marsupial.
It's about a koala navigating the pressures of middle school.
Kevin loves teen dramas.
But when I told him we didn't have time to see it, he was so disappointed.
Have you ever seen a disappointed guinea pig, Asa?
It's not pretty.
Joy, maybe it's just me, but it sounds like you're trying to cram a little too much into the weekend.
I mean, taco contest?
Guinea pig movie dates?
The weekend is only two days.
Wait, say that again.
You're trying to cram too much in.
No, no, no, the other part.
Guinea pig movie dates?
No, no, no, the other, other part.
The weekend is...
Only two days?
That's it!
We have to figure out a way to make the weekend longer.
Who says a weekend should only be two days anyway?
Why not three?
Or four?
Or six?
I would love a six-day weekend.
Yes!
Think of all the sleepovers and whitewater rafting and coconut crumb cheesecake we'd have time for.
To the forever-ago laboratory!
But first, mind if we get lunch?
I'm having the strangest craving for peanut butter bologna sandwiches.
Welcome to Forever Ago from APM Studios.
I'm Joy Dolo.
I'm Asa.
And this is Kevin Bacon, the guinea pig.
Today we're talking all about the weekend and we're at the Forever Ago History Laboratory to figure out a way to make it longer.
Um, Joy, this is a garden shed.
Man, it is so dusty in here.
Look, even Kevin Bacon's tiny notes is running from all the dust bunnies.
It looks like a garden shed, but check this out.
Whoa!
Where did that keyboard come from?
Now, you just whisper the secret password into this hidden microphone.
Harry Styles Solid Gold Toilet.
And voila!
Welcome to the Forever Ago History Lab.
Wow, there's a whole other room back there.
This is really rad.
Look at all this fancy equipment.
Wait, what's that tiny little mansion over there?
Oh, that's Kevin Bacon's guinea pig villa.
I'll just tuck him in there.
Who's a good piggy?
Your mama's best little piggy.
Yes, you are.
Oh, and check out these big cushy armchairs.
It's like sitting on a marshmallow on a cloud on a pile of mashed potatoes.
Oh, yeah.
These are my thinking chairs.
I like to be extra comfy when I'm pondering big historical questions like today's.
Where did the weekend come from?
Asa, got some questions for you.
What do you like to do on the weekend?
Um, well, to start off, you know, I just scroll on my phone, you know, the usual.
You scroll on your phone?
Yeah, and like I wake up at like 5 a.m. because I forget to like turn off my alarm.
Oh, yeah.
So you wake up and then is there like an activity you like to do?
Um, I like to play Roblox.
Like, my entire day.
Like, okay, wait, calm down.
I was born in 1987.
So, Roblox is a video game, right?
Yeah.
And I've heard a lot of people like this.
What is it?
Tell me about it.
Basically just imagine.
Okay, let me try and put this in your.
Okay, imagine Super Mario Brothers.
Yeah!
But, like, interactive.
Yeah.
Oh.
Kind of like that.
Okay.
Roblox.
That sounds like a lot.
I know Super Mario really well.
I have an NES.
Oh, do you?
Yeah.
Oh, that's neat.
I just have a lot of old stuff in my house.
Yeah.
Well, I guess the only old thing in my house is me.
Moving on, Asa.
So you play video games.
You scroll on your phone.
If you had a perfect weekend, what would you do?
Anything could happen.
Anything.
Anything.
Anything in the world.
Okay, so basically, I get a knock on my front door at 5 a.m., right?
Mm-hmm, yep.
Michael Jordan is at my door, right?
Oh, my gosh.
And then he flies me to Los Angeles, right?
Mm-hmm, yep.
And then he adopts me.
Mm-hmm.
Make sure you're mindful with that.
And then, let's just say, you know, I'm the new Jordan, you know.
Ace of Jordan, got it, yep.
I get free shoes, you know.
I live in Los Angeles now.
All right, so you're with Michael Jordan.
He's buying you shoes.
What are you all doing?
Playing Roblox?
Yeah.
All right, time to get down to business and figure out how to make the weekend longer.
I tried this years ago, but I didn't get anywhere.
Let me just...
Joy!
It's been ages!
Oh, hi, Teddy!
Asa, this is Teddy, our official forever-ago librarian and lab assistant.
Teddy, you're wearing two different pairs of shoes again.
And your shirt's on backwards.
Oh, that's why it's been so hard to button it up today.
Well, you know how it goes when you're pondering big historical questions.
What was all that noise?
Noise?
Oh, that!
I was just reorganizing some encyclopedias by smell and texture, as one does, and I was struck by the sudden urge to have a history dance party with myself.
When I'm history dancing, I like to do a lot of high kicks and butt shaking.
And I may have knocked over a few items.
We're really glad you're here because we need some help.
Do you remember a couple years ago when I started working on a top secret project to make the weekend longer?
Operation Everlasting Weekend?
How could I forget?
Well, Asa and I were just talking about how the weekend isn't long enough to fit all the fun stuff we want to do.
And it got me thinking.
Maybe it's time to pull out the old weekend-stretching gadgets we dreamed up so we can finally make it happen.
I'm sorry, did you say weekend-stretching gadgets?
Oh, yeah.
Teddy and I experimented with lots of different stuff back then.
We tried growing some new days in our forever-ago garden, Wenz Brewery, Thirstober... terrible idea.
It was a single day that lasted a whole month.
I had to take so many naps.
We even tried using this antique taffy machine to stretch out the weekend.
But that didn't work either.
Side note, that's why the red velvet couch over there was 20 feet long.
So the gadgets didn't, like, work work?
And by that I mean they didn't work at all?
But we did do piles and piles of research on the weekend.
You still have it, Teddy?
Do I have research?
Do I have research?
Do I have research?
Um, is he okay?
These closets are practically stuffed with research on the weekend.
See all these manila folders?
And the big stacks of newspapers?
And the dusty books that smell like an old basement?
But in the best way?
Teddy gets really emotional about history research.
You should see me every time I watch a Ken Burns documentary.
I'm a wreck for a week.
Okay, but for today.
Before we can figure out how to make the weekend longer, we need some background.
Yeah, where did the weekend come from?
Why is it Saturday and Sunday instead of Monday and Thursday?
Or Tuesday and Friday?
And why do we get two days off instead of one or three or none?
Whoa, no weekend ever?
That's dark.
That's like a hamster wheel where the hamsters never stop running.
Or popcorns that last forever.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine a time when the two-day weekend didn't even exist.
But in the United States, it's only been part of our routines for less than 100 years.
That means your great-great-great-grandparents probably didn't even have a weekend, at least not like we think of it now.
Saturday and Sunday did exist, but back then, people didn't think of them as the weekend.
A lot of people still had to work.
Right.
The history of the weekend is closely connected to how and where we work.
To get the full picture, we have to go back to the 1700s in Europe.
Okay, so more than 300 years ago, way before cars, or TVs, or even electricity.
Think big curly wigs, fancy dresses, and horse-drawn carriages.
Yeah, but around this time, most people lived on farms and in small rural communities.
A lot of them grew their own food and made what they needed by hand, like their clothes and soap and candles.
And people mostly worked Monday through Saturday and only took Sunday off.
This was tied to religion.
In the Christian faith, Sundays are thought of as a holy day of rest.
And because electric lights hadn't been invented yet, most of their work was done during the day when the sun was up.
Oh, goodness.
Look at this to-do list.
It's a mile long.
Feed the pigs, clean out the chicken coop, make candles, do the wash.
And what's this?
I can't read my own handwriting.
Bloof spew?
No, no, no, no.
It says floof spleen.
I'm pretty sure that's not it.
Maybe it's floor sweep?
Nope.
Pretty sure it says floof spleen.
Well, great.
Now we have to floof our spleens today, too.
All before the sun sets.
As if we didn't have enough to do already.
Sounds like it was a lot of work to keep the farms running.
Yes, but it was different from how we work today because farm work was so connected to the seasons.
In the spring, people worked from sunrise to sunset plowing the land and getting it ready for planting.
And in the fall, farmers were busy harvesting crops.
But there were also long periods of the year where there wasn't as much to do.
Like in the winter.
Even people who didn't live on farms, like merchants and craftsmen, had a pretty relaxed attitude towards schedules.
Some days they might open the shops at 8 a.m. and the next day at 9 or 10 a.m.
And that was true for school, too.
Back then, kids were required to go to school and a lot of them stayed home to work on the farm instead.
Kids who did go to school didn't necessarily go every day.
They just showed up when they could.
So work and school schedules depended a lot on nature's rhythms, like when the sun rose and set and when the crops were ready to be harvested.
And there was plenty of time to rest.
Even during busier times of the year, people took long breaks for meals and naps.
The pace of work was slow and historians think most people didn't work more than eight hours a day at most.
But that all changed with the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial Revolution!
Oh yeah, the Industrial Revolution was this super important period in history when more stuff started being made in factories instead of by hand.
It started in the late 1700s in Britain.
Suddenly, these factories were popping up everywhere.
And they made a bunch of different things, from cloth and steel to buckles and buttons.
The coal-powered steam engine had just been invented, which meant people could manufacture a lot of the same thing much quicker than making it by hand.
Instead of weaving one small piece of cloth on your loom at home, you could make piles and piles of cloth.
So you could make lots and lots of clothes for your pet guinea pigs.
A different outfit for every day of the week.
Okay, those all seem like good things.
Uh-huh.
Technology was blossoming around this time.
But these factories weren't great places to work.
They were usually crowded, hot, and pretty dangerous.
And because there weren't labor laws yet to prevent kids from working.
Some of these factory workers were as young as five or six years old.
And there were also lots of rules, not about safety, but about what workers could and couldn't do.
And if you broke any of them, you'd lose some of your pay.
Here, look at this.
These are real things that workers inside one cotton factory were punished for.
Idleness and looking through the window.
Dancing.
Using ill language.
And riding on each other's backs.
Seriously?
Your boss might cut your pay because of dancing?
Or piggyback rides?
You better believe it.
And here's the kicker.
The Industrial Revolution completely changed how people thought about work and time.
Instead of flowing with the rhythm of the seasons and working mostly during the day, people started working much, much longer hours in the factories, sometimes up to 16 hours a day.
16 hours?
That's like twice as long as my school day.
Yeah, and suddenly schedules became a big deal.
Like you arrived for your job at exactly 6 a.m. and left the factory at 8 p.m., for example.
Time was something to be measured right down to the second.
Hey, youse, you're late again.
I told you yesterday get your hiney in your chair by 6 am or I'll find another person who can get their hiney here on time.
I got at least 30 hineys here who can take your job lickety-split, kid.
My hiney was on time, but then I had to stop to pet this really cute cat outside for 30 seconds.
Oh, and then I dropped my lunch on the ground, and the cat started eating it, and... That's it.
Get your hiney out of here.
You're fired.
Shh!
It was around this point that people started thinking about time as a commodity, like it was something that could be bought or sold or even wasted.
Even Ben Franklin jumped on the bandwagon.
In the mid-1700s, he wrote in one of his books, time is money.
Historians think he probably wasn't the first one to come up with that saying, but it really stuck.
So people were working much longer days in hot, crowded factories, and the weekend didn't really exist yet.
If you were lucky, you got Sundays off.
And that was it.
But it wouldn't be long before some of these workers started to push back.
Yeah, they wanted a real weekend.
Oh, that reminds me.
Time to fire up the Sunday replicator.
Just have to crank this handle.
Push this button.
And we're good to go.
The Sunday replicator?
Like, making more Sundays so we can make the weekend longer?
No, no, no.
The Sunday replicator.
Like, ice cream Sundays.
Teddy and I were trying to make a machine to copy Sunday, the day of the week, but all it does is make ridiculously good ice cream Sundays, which isn't actually a problem.
I mean, you can't talk history without an extra creamy frozen dessert, am I right?
Joydolo, here are your cookies and cream sundaes with... extra whipped cream and... gummy bears.
Enjoy.
Wait, can I get some fudge on mine?
No.
No fudge.
Fudge is an abomination.
Yeah, there's some glitch that makes the sundae machine hate fudge.
While we eat our ice cream, how about we play a quick game of...
That's the game where we try to guess the order things came in history.
Today we're looking at fun weekendy stuff.
Waffles, comic strips, and frozen orange juice concentrate.
Which do you think came first, which came second, and which came most recently?
Asa, which one is oldest in your mind?
Okay, so I think that maybe the orange juice concentrate is probably the oldest.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Why is that?
It just sounds a little old.
Have you ever used that before or drank it before?
No, I never used it.
I don't think so.
You know what I'm talking about, like the can?
It's in that can that's got the metal on the top and it's got paper around it.
It's in the frozen food section.
Oh.
We used to drink it a lot when I was younger.
So that just really touched my heart there.
But yeah, no, I could see that being first in history.
So if we had frozen juice concentrate first, second up?
So I think it was comic strips.
Okay.
All right.
So we have frozen juice concentrate, and then comic strips, and then waffles, as the most recent in history.
I think so.
But I think all of this is like super, super old.
So yeah.
All right.
So why comic strips second and why waffles third?
Well, let's just say back in the day, a lot of people didn't have the materials.
They had to eat their food super fast because they didn't have anything to preserve the food.
Yeah.
Okay, so Frozen Juice is the oldest.
Yeah.
Comic Strips is next up.
And then Waffles is final.
Yeah.
Is that your final answer?
Yes.
We'll hear the answers at the end of the episode, right after the credits.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Forever Ago.
I'm Joy.
I'm Asa.
And this is Teddy, our official Forever Ago librarian and lab assistant.
Teddy, your glasses are on upside down.
Oops.
That's why everything's upside down today.
I'm pretty sure that's not... Never mind.
Today we're talking all about the history of the weekend, so we can figure out a way to make it longer.
For a long long time, people's work schedules depended a lot on the seasons and when the sun rose and set.
But then came the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial Revolution!
Suddenly, a lot of people were working long hours inside of factories and they started thinking about time really differently, as a thing that could be bought and sold.
So around this time, most people were working at least six days a week, with only Sunday off.
But then in the early 1800s, some people in Britain started to push back.
That's right, because Sunday was their only day off.
Lots of people crammed as much fun as possible into that day.
I say, are you going to the hamster races this evening, Haverford?
Should be a lively one, I hear.
My money's answer squeaks a lot.
No question.
Why, I wouldn't miss the Hamtucky Derby for the world, my chap.
But I'm also supposed to judge a toffee-eating contest and go canoeing in Little Codswallop Lake later.
Egads!
However will we fit all of these splendiferously enjoyable activities into a single day?
The hamster races come not but once a year.
So some people came up with an ingenious way to make their weekends longer.
They stopped showing up for work on Mondays.
So they just didn't go?
They just didn't go.
They called them Saint Mondays, and they got really popular.
More and more workers started taking Mondays off.
So many, in fact, that factory owners worried that not enough people were showing up for work.
In 1842, a group who called themselves the Early Closing Association started pushing the British government to give workers a half day off on Saturday, plus Sundays off.
Seems reasonable.
So, who was in this group?
Oh, they came from everywhere.
Workers artisans, religious clergy, even business owners in the leisure industry, aka the people who made money selling fun activities.
Yeah, these business owners figured if people had more time off they'd have more time to spend money on fun stuff like taking the train to the countryside, going to concerts or seeing plays.
And if they had more time to spend money, that's good for business.
Some people even wrote into their local newspapers trying to make the case for giving workers a half day off on Saturdays.
Here's an actual letter from 1856.
Dear Sir, I unflinchingly assert that there are none in operation at the present time more calculated to produce and augment the general moral and spiritual interests of society than the early closing movement.
Moral and spiritual what now?
Basically people like.
The letter writer argued that if you gave workers more time off, they'd be better people.
The early closing association kept pushing and pushing, and eventually it worked.
By the 1870s, it became standard for workers in Britain to take a half day off on Saturday.
It was around this time in 1879 that the word weekend first started being used.
So British workers started to have something closer to a real weekend, about 100 years after the Industrial Revolution first started in Europe.
And it was right around this time that the second wave of this technological revolution got going.
This time in the U.S.
Industrial Revolution!
Oh yeah, that's when big mills and factories started popping up in the U.S., right?
Right!
And basically the same things that happen in Britain happened all over again in the U.S.
The crowded factories, the really long hours.
So the weekend still didn't exist in the U.S. then?
Correctamundo.
And just like in Britain, workers started asking for more time off.
Wait, Teddy, don't we have a movie about this somewhere?
Yes!
I think it's under this pile of old junk.
Hang on, just a second.
No, don't!
Phew, this is a lot of stuff.
Wait, are there five George Foreman grills in here, Joy?
I just thought maybe someday I... You should have at least six of them.
I mean, who knows when you're going to need to quickly and efficiently grill six things at the same time from the comfort of your own home?
Right?
Okay, let's see.
Let me just pop in that movie.
Uh, whoops, wrong one.
Here it is.
Hello, I'm Travis Burns. very distant cousin, twice removed of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
Eee!
Ken Burns!
But enough about that guy.
You might recognize me, Travis Burns, from my award-winning documentaries, including What's That Smell?
The Untold Story of Feta Cheese, plus Cream Cheese, Is It Really Cheese?
And of course, Chuck E. Cheese, Fact or Fiction.
Is it just me or does that guy really like cheese?
Today, how the weekend came to the U.S.
In the 1870s, U.S. workers started organizing into labor unions.
A union is a group of workers that come together to negotiate with their bosses for things they want, like higher pay, better working conditions.
And back then unions wanted a shorter, eight-hour workday, which was a super-duper revolutionary idea back then.
Even more revolutionary than pre-sliced cheese.
Oh yeah, he really does love cheese.
But the idea of limiting worker hours didn't really take off until the early 1900s, starting with someone named Henry Ford.
Henry Ford?
Oh, that's the car guy.
Henry Ford, who you may know as the car guy.
He was an incredibly successful automobile inventor who created what's known as the assembly line, where each worker would do one task in the factory over and over and over.
In 1914 Ford made headlines when he announced his company would pay 5 a day for eight hours of work.
That would be like $150 today, double what most factories were paying back then.
And then, about 10 years later, he made another huge announcement.
The Ford Motor Company would move to a five-day workweek.
Translation? his workers would get an actual weekend for the first time.
More time for all the things they loved.
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese on pasta grilled cheese sandwiches.
A nibble of Swiss first thing in the morning.
So Henry Ford gave all his workers two days off every week?
You might be wondering why Ford would have done this.
Well, it wasn't out of the goodness of his heart.
Ford figured that by giving workers more time off They'd have more time to buy stuff like the cars he was making.
Here's what he wrote at the time.
Just as the eight-hour day opened our way to prosperity in America, so the five-day work week will open our way to still greater prosperity.
People who have more leisure must have more clothes.
They eat a greater variety of food.
They require more transportation in vehicles.
In other words, more time off, more time to spend money.
Up next, the shocking history behind Gorgonzola cheese.
You might be surprised.
Huh, so Henry Ford wanted people to spend more money, so he gave his workers a five-day work week?
Yeah, and because he was such a major employer at the time, lots of other business owners and manufacturers followed his lead.
But we can't give Ford too much credit.
Unions and labor activists were a huge part of this story, too.
For decades, they kept up the pressure, pushing employers for more time off and shorter work days.
They used all kinds of tactics, from boycotts to going on strike.
That's when people all stopped working at the same time in protest.
And all that effort eventually paid off.
By 1938, U.S. lawmakers had passed a massively important labor law.
This law did a ton of different things, like banning child labor and setting a minimum wage.
But it also officially created the five-day work week.
And ta-da!
The weekend was born!
Oh!
That's actually pretty cool.
But the whole reason why we started talking about this was to figure out how to make the weekend longer.
I mean, we need more time for slip and slides and bike riding and history dance parties.
And karaoke sing-offs and sleepovers and all the other fun stuff we can't fit into the weekend.
You know it is funny that you bring that up because much of the world is going through something kind of similar to the Industrial Revolution right now.
At least in terms of how we think about work.
Lots of people started working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, and a good chunk of them are still working at home.
On top of that, more jobs are being automated or done by robots.
And some people say it's time to rethink how we rest and relax, too.
Rethink it how?
Well, some companies and schools and even entire countries are experimenting with three-day weekends.
Yeah.
The idea is to give workers more freedom to manage their time.
That way, they can do their jobs and still have time for all the other fun things in their lives.
Some research has shown people who have three-day weekends say they're less stressed about work and have better mental and physical health.
But we still have a ways to go before more companies and schools start moving forward with the three-day weekend.
Joy, Teddy, hear me out.
What if we get this weekend-stretching taffy machine up and running again so we don't have to wait?
We could have longer weekends right now.
Deal!
But be careful.
The last time we tried using it, we stretched out some of the junk in the lab by accident and that's why all the pencils over there are 10 feet long.
Whatever you do, don't press the big red button.
That's the super stretch button.
You mean the one Kevin Bacon the guinea pig currently has his paw on?
Kevin Bacon?
No!
No!
This episode was written by Shayla Farzan, with production help from Molly Bloom, Anna Goldfield, Rosie DuPont, Nico Gonzalez-Whistler, Ruby Guthrie and Anna Wagle.
Our editors are Shayla Farzan and Sanda Totten.
Sound design by Rachel Brees.
Theme music by Mark Sanchez.
Beth Perlman is our executive producer.
We had engineering help from Josh Chavajo and Anna Haverman.
The executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavadi, Joanne Griffith, and Alex Shaffert.
Special thanks to Brent Miller, Andy Doucette, Joanne Griffith, and Ewan Kerr.
If you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass.
Check it out at foreverago.org slash contact.
Okay, Asa, ready to hear the answers for First Things First?
Yes.
Yes.
I was born ready.
All right.
Just as a reminder, our three things were waffles, frozen orange juice concentrate and comic strips.
And you said the first was frozen juice concentrate, then comic strips, and then waffles.
Yes.
Now, ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-bum.
I have to get one thing right, please.
You know, you did okay.
You did okay.
Uh-oh.
I'm scared.
Okay, so, well, first up, waffles is actually the oldest thing.
Huh?
Waffles is more than 2,000 years old.
How did the old people make that?
The first people to make waffles were the ancient Greeks.
They called them obelios.
Oh, yum.
Put some obelios in syrup.
Oh, my gosh.
These early waffles were pretty basic, just flat cakes cooked between two metal plates over a fire.
Oh.
But by the Middle Ages, people were making much fancier waffles, using waffle irons engraved with all kinds of things, like symbols of love, coats of arms, animals, and, of course, the signature grid pattern we know today.
And then in the mid-1700s, North American colonists started having parties called waffle frolics, which were literally parties where people ate waffles.
Can we bring back the waffle frolics, please?
Please, I would go to that.
It actually wasn't until 1869 that a New York inventor patented the first waffle iron, which looked pretty similar to the ones we use today, except it sat on the burner of a stove or over a fire.
Asa, I would like to invite you to a waffle frolic.
Oh my gosh.
We have to have like an official waffle frolic sometime.
I would want to go so bad.
So waffles was first.
But guess what?
You got the next one right.
Yeah.
Comic strips was second.
And that was invented in the 1400s.
So comic strips have been around since medieval times.
In the 1400s, people in Germany started carving images into blocks of wood and using them to print comics.
And these early comics were a series of small images that told a story, like comic strips you'd see today.
But they weren't meant to be funny.
They usually focused on politics.
And it wasn't until the late 1800s that comic strips really started becoming popular in the US, with the publication of early comics like Hogan's, Alley and the Katzenjammer Kids.
Oh, classic, Katzenjammer Kids and Garfield.
So last but certainly not least is frozen orange juice concentrate.
And I got those switched up.
Yeah, yeah, you were close, though.
You were close.
And that was invented in 1945.
What?
Yeah, 1945.
Oh, my gosh.
A long time ago.
Frozen orange juice concentrate was invented by U.S. government scientists in 1945.
Until then, Florida orange growers had been dealing with a big, big problem.
Too many oranges.
They had so many oranges that a lot of them went to waste.
There just weren't enough people to buy them.
Growers had tried freezing orange juice as early as the 1930s, but the result was a sludgy, discolored glop.
Ew.
I don't want to drink that.
But then in the early 1940s, the U.S.
Army wanted to make sure troops fighting in World War II were getting enough vitamin C, So they offered a huge amount of money to anyone who could figure out how to freeze orange juice and still make it taste good.
What a challenge.
By 1945, scientists at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture cracked the code and figured out how to evaporate the liquid in fresh juice so that the frozen stuff tasted good.
It was later named Minute Maid because you could make orange juice with it.
In less than a minute.
That's the stuff that we drink.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, yeah.
Minute made.
So that's what it was.
Yeah.
I wasn't thinking it was an old thing from like the 14, like before BC.
Oh, my gosh.
That was cool.
Waffle frolic.
I am down to party.
Or I guess what they were called, obelios and obelio frolic.
I'd go into that.
Bring some syrup and some friends.
Kevin Bacon.
Yeah.
We'll be back next week with an episode all about the history of electric cars.
Thanks for listening.
