Brands and inventions

When brands become words: 10 U.S. classics

Some 20th-century inventions solved real problems of everyday life, and their stories are just as surprising: like Band-Aid helping soldiers during World War II, or the Jacuzzi being created to relieve arthritis pain. Over time, many of these products became so popular that their brand names turned into everyday words. Here are 10 brand names that became everyday words.

Every small cut brings it to mind, but did you know that Band-Aid was created in 1920 by Earle Dickson, a Johnson & Johnson employee, for his wife? Josephine Dickson often got cut and burned while cooking, so Earle combined two products: adhesive tape and gauze, and the Band-Aid Brand adhesive bandage was created. One year later, 1921, they were already in stores, and in 1942, Band-Aid was the product in every soldier's kit on the front lines of World War II. One century later, in 2021, Band-Aid introduced "OURTONE" bandages, designed to better blend with brown skin tones. Today, it remains the top-selling bandage brand.

Although today they’re linked to relaxation and luxury, the Jacuzzi wasn’t originally designed for that. The story begins with seven Italian brothers who moved to California in the early 1900s. Known as the Jacuzzi Brothers Inc., they worked as inventors, developing water pumps for agriculture and engineering solutions for aviation.

Their most important invention came from a personal need. After one of the brothers’ sons, Kenneth, was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, Candido Jacuzzi created a portable hydrotherapy pump to help ease his pain. Introduced in 1956, the device turned a regular bathtub into a therapeutic spa. In 1968, Roy Jacuzzi took the idea further and launched the first fully integrated whirlpool bath. Today, the company holds more than 250 patents, and "Jacuzzi" has become almost synonymous with whirlpool baths.

Another man who made a discovery that stood the test of time. In 1968, Spencer Silver was trying to create a super-strong adhesive at 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company), but instead came up with a weak, reusable one. It could stick to surfaces without leaving marks, but at first, no one knew what to use it for.

A few years later, in 1974, Art Fry needed a bookmark that would stay in place without damaging pages. He realized Silver’s adhesive was perfect for that idea, and it quickly evolved into small and removable notes. In 1977, they were called "Press n’ Peel," but the product didn’t gain much attention until 1980, when they were relaunched as Post-it Notes and became part of everyday life.

Believe it or not, it all started with pie. The Frisbie Pie Company of Connecticut was one of the most successful bakeries on the East Coast by the mid-1900s. College students began tossing empty pie tins, shouting "Frisbie!" to warn each other, and the name stuck as the game spread across campuses.

On the other side of the country, Walter Frederick Morrison was experimenting with flying discs. Inspired by the growing fascination with UFO sightings, he designed a plastic version called the "Pluto Platter," which he was selling in Los Angeles by 1951. In 1955, Wham-O, a renowned toy brand, spotted him and brought him on board. After hearing the word "Frisbee" used by college students, the company officially adopted the name in 1957. Today, flying disc sports are played around the globe by millions of people.

During World War I, Kimberly-Clark developed crepe paper for gas mask filters. After the war, with less demand for military supplies, the company needed new uses for the material. In the 1920s, it was adapted into Kotex, offering a more hygienic option for women. It was later marketed as a "marvelous new way to remove cold cream," but, in 1927, the company suggested another use: disposable "absorbent handkerchiefs." By 1930, it was promoted as "the handkerchief you can throw away," reflecting a growing focus on hygiene and convenience. Today, it’s hard to think of tissues without calling them Kleenex.

In 1923, after seeing his wife wrap small pieces of cotton around toothpicks, Leo Gerstenzang founded the Leo Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Co. and began producing a ready-to-use cotton swab.

The product was first called "Baby Gays," then renamed "Q-Tips Baby Gays" in 1926, before being shortened to simply Q-tips. The "Q" stands for quality. It became widely popular in the 1920s–30s as a baby care product, and in 1987 was acquired by Unilever, helping expand it worldwide. Over time, the name "Q-tips" became so common that many people use it to refer to any cotton swab, not just the brand.

How did a young banjo player in Minnesota end up creating Scotch Tape? Richard Drew, who practiced the banjo in his free time, joined 3M Company (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) in 1923 and began working with materials in auto body shops. There, he noticed painters struggled to get clean lines because existing tape damaged fresh paint. He solved this by inventing masking tape in 1925. An early version didn’t have enough adhesive, and painters joked the company was being "scotch," or cheap; a nickname that stuck.

In 1930, Drew adapted the idea to cellophane, creating the first transparent Scotch Tape for sealing and everyday use. The product became especially popular during the Great Depression, when people used it to fix and reuse items instead of replacing them because they were rather expensive or scarce in markets.

In 1845, Peter Cooper created a powdered gelatin, but it wasn’t yet a ready-to-use dessert. Decades later, in 1897, Pearle Bixby Wait and his wife, May, added sugar and fruit flavor, turning it into what would become Jell-O. In 1899, the couple sold their flavored gelatin product and business to their neighbor, Orator Francis Woodward, for $450 because it wasn't growing.

Until Woodward then built a strong marketing campaign, using free recipe booklets and traveling salesmen to show how easy it was to make, helping Jell-O grow in popularity. By the early 1900s, it was already a household name, and today, it’s known as one of America’s most famous desserts.

Dr. Feet was a pharmacist in Lynchburg, Virginia, who opened his family-run pharmacy in 1869. He was known for creating remedies and experimenting with ingredients to help customers.

In the 1890s, he developed an early version of ChapStick. However, it wasn’t until his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Morton, who had already bought the product, refined the idea that the product took shape. Mrs. Morton melted the mixture and poured it into brass tubes to form sticks, making it easier to use and ready for wider distribution, turning the product into America’s easy-to-carry favorite for lip care to this day.

In 1959, the Xerox 914 copier was introduced, allowing people to make plain-paper copies quickly, changing office work for good. How did it all start? Patent attorney Chester Carlson created the first xerographic image in 1938. He needed a simpler way to copy documents after studying imaging processes at the public library. At first, he called his method "electrophotography," because it used light and static electricity. After being rejected by more than twenty companies, his idea was finally picked up by the Haloid Company, when a consultant suggested the name "xerography," meaning "dry writing," to replace the original term.

After the success of the Xerox 914, Haloid Company renamed itself Xerox in 1961, turning the invention into a global business. The copier quickly became essential in offices, making document duplication faster and more accessible than ever before. As the technology spread, the brand name became so widely used that "to xerox" started to mean "to photocopy," until these days.

We still don’t know

An immortal jellyfish? 10 spooky and unanswered questions about the sea

Some people are scared of the ocean. Can you blame them? Though waters cover 70% of our planet, scientists are still scratching their heads about certain unanswered questions. How long can blue whales actually live? What substance makes some waters glow eerily white at night? And what’s with the self-rejuvenating, immortal jellyfish? These are some of the mysteries we’ll explore in this article!

Found abandoned in 1872 with sails set, cargo intact, and dinner still on the table, the Mary Celeste is the poster child for maritime enigmas. The whole crew vanished without a trace and was never heard of again.

Mutiny? Rogue wave? Alcohol fumes? Giant squid? No theory fully fits. It's a fascinating tale that has been the subject of documentaries, theatre plays, novels, and movies.

For centuries, sailors have reported seeing entire portions of the ocean surface glowing white at night, like a ghostly reflection.

An explanation could be massive blooms of bioluminescent bacteria, but no one knows how they coordinate light across such huge distances or why the phenomenon lasts for hours. Even with satellite detections, it remains one of the ocean’s eeriest light shows.

Tales of a giant squid have been alive for centuries, but it was only in 2004 that humanity was able to photograph this fabled creature. In that year, a Japanese team captured a live one on camera in its natural habitat and finally proved that the creature behind centuries of sea-monster legends was very real.

And yet, we still know shockingly little about its life cycle, breeding habits, or how something that big stays so well hidden.

You’d think the largest creature ever to exist would be the easiest to study. Nope. We still struggle to track migration patterns, understand their communication system, or explain the full recovery timeline after they were nearly hunted to extinction.

Turritopsis dohrnii cheats death by reverting its adult cells back to a juvenile state when stressed. It’s like if a human under pressure suddenly turned back into a toddler.

This regeneration process is wildly complex and not fully understood, and scientists hope that cracking its secret might reveal insights into aging itself.

The stretch between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico has inspired endless theories. Unexplained disappearances, bizarre compass behavior, and strange weather patterns have contributed to building the legend.

Scientific explanations abound, from methane hydrates to violent storms, but the Triangle’s mythic aura refuses to die.

The Challenger Deep, the trench’s lowest point, plunges almost 7 miles. Only a handful of people have ever explored its bottom, including filmmaker James Cameron in 2012.

What lives down there? What geological processes unfold under such pressure? Every new expedition reveals creatures that look like they belong in fever dreams.

Off the coast of Japan lies a submerged stone structure with terraces, pillars, and sharp geometries that seem carved… Unless they were shaped by strange phenomena of nature.

Some believe it’s the remains of an ancient city, sunken after an earthquake; others argue it’s purely geological. Today, it’s a riddle lying quietly under turquoise waters.

In 1918, a massive US Navy collier vanished without a distress call while crossing the Caribbean. More than 300 people disappeared with it, the single largest non-combat loss of life in U.S. Navy history.

No wreckage has ever been found. Storm? Structural failure? Something stranger? The sea has kept its mouth shut.

This line gets repeated a lot because it’s shockingly true. With sonar mapping still incomplete and most of the ocean floor left untouched by human eyes, researchers say we’ve charted only about a quarter of it in detail.

Mars, by contrast, has been mapped in full thanks to satellites. The ultimate plot twist is that we might understand another planet better than our own.