5 Inventions You Won't Believe Came From War

There is something about eating a Twinkie that just lets the world know you're not too keen on self-respect. Maybe it's because under "expiration date" Hostess just prints "LOL." Or maybe it's because you're eating something called a "Twinkie" and you're not five-years old. We're not judging; this is being typed one-handed, and there are Twinkie marks all over the space bar. So why do we have Hitler to thank for them?

Well, back in the 1930s, a baker named James A. Dewar invented a sort of strawberry shortcake snack for Hostess; yellow sponge cake with strawberries crammed inside. Because strawberries were only in season a couple of months out of the year, they eventually switched it up and filled them with bananas instead. People didn't exactly go crazy for them.

But then WWII began. The government started rationing all sorts of goods, so they could be used to fight the Nazis instead. Bananas were among these items, because apparently you can't stop a blitzkrieg without bananas. Maybe by littering the battlefield with peels so the Wehrmacht would slip hilariously on them.

Whatever the reason, Dewar and Hostess were clearly screwed. No strawberries, no bananas; all they had was their stupid empty yellow cakes. Dewar finally decided screw it, leave out the fruit completely and squirt some cheap cream filling in there. What else was he going to do?

People went absolutely nuts for it. Sales exploded, and the modern Twinkie was born.

In 1943, naval engineer Richard James was working on a doozy of a problem. Delicate equipment aboard battleships had this way of getting knocked the hell around during high seas. So James was messing around with springs to support the phonogram machines or whatever, when what do you know? He dropped one of the springs. And instead of just sitting there like a punk, the little spring kind of stepped away in a very slinky-like manner.

Knowing that there was nothing kids loved more than coiled metal, James figured he just might have invented the world's greatest toy ever. Within two years, James found the perfect metal for his toy idea and scored a $500 loan to build his first batch, which he sold in 90 minutes. A few years later, probably still haunted by his failure to actually keep the battleship equipment safe, James gave it all up and ran away to join a cult. Go figure.

While the Slinky was discovered by accident, tons of government dollars worth of research were poured into Silly Putty. In 1943, the wartime rubber shortage was so bad that the government asked private companies to create a synthetic rubber substitute. General Electric had a whole team of scientists throw together every chemical they could think of in hopes that it would create something rubber-like.

One squishy mixture proved to have surprising qualities: It bounced and stretched, it would not stick and it only melted at very high temperatures. Things were looking up until someone pointed out that you can't make tires out of something with the malleability of wet chewing gum, even if it can totally copy the newspaper.

It was so useless at replacing rubber that GE tried to send it to scientists around the world in hopes that someone, anyone, could figure out something to do with it. Eventually, a toy manufacturer mentioned that little kids will pretty much play with any goddamned thing you give them. He figured that he might as well try to sell the stuff by packing it in small eggs and advertising it through novelty catalogs. The rest is history. Cheap, $2 in a pink plastic egg history.

Finally, there's Walter "Fred" Morrison.

Fred, like most other college kids in the 1930s, spent a great deal of time throwing around pie pans from the Frisbie Baking Company. But it wasn't until he joined the Air Force that he learned about aerodynamics and he realized he was doing science during those pan-flinging sessions.

So, Fred took what he learned about basic aerodynamics from the Air Force and made a prototype of a better flying disc, that didn't have bits of pie crust stuck to it. And instead of tin, he went with plastic. He dubbed his creation the "Pluto Platter," which was ultimately renamed the "Frisbee" and went on to provide hardcore leaping motivation for extreme college kids everywhere.

If you're thinking that you're about to hear Tabasco sauce was originally brewed as a cannon lubricant or some kind of chemical weapon, relax. The Civil War gave us Tabasco in a much more roundabout way.

Edmund McIlhenny was a self-made man, the kind of guy who picked himself up by the bootstraps, worked 12 hours a day and became a prominent New Orleans banker, just in time for the American Civil War to erupt and destroy everything he'd worked so hard to achieve.

Once Union soldiers invaded his town, McIlhenny fled with his family to his wife's home at a place called Avery Island, which wasn't actually an island at all, unless you consider a big ol' salt dome an "island." McIlhenny started a new life helping to run the family salt mines, which was actually pretty good business. The Avery Island salt mine provided the Confederacy with 22 million pounds of salt during the war, and before he knew it, McIlhenny was back on his feet!

That is, until Union forces mounted an attack on his salt mine and he had to flee once more. This time they went to Texas, where the McIlhennys wisely stayed put until the end of the war. And while the cat's away, the Union soldiers will plunder your plantation and burn your crops to the ground, as the McIlhenny family discovered upon their return.

Everything had been destroyed, Yankee-style, and the only crops that seemed to thrive in the ashy, salty soil were some pepper plants... from the Mexican state of Tabasco.

(Thunder crashes ominously in the background)

Thanks to the war, in 1868 those peppers were pretty much the only thing McIlhenny had going for him. So, he mixed them up with some Avery Island salt, vinegar, other peppers and wham! Tabasco sauce was born. He bottled his concoction in some old perfume bottles and started shipping to them grocers around the country. Two years later he got a patent, and the McIlhenny family has been running the Tabasco brand ever since.

So when Japan cut off the West from their silk, American women freaked the hell out. Women put money into grabbing the last silk pantyhose at a time when they had to grow their own food and turn over their kitchen grease for the war effort. That's how important silk was.

It was about that point that American ladies got good news and bad news. The good news was that back in 1935, DuPont hired the brightest chemists of the day to work on synthetic polymers to replace the silk they knew they weren't going to be able to get once Japanese relations soured, and what they came up with was nylon.

Nylon was stronger than silk and totally awesome for covering bare legs. The bad news was that, oh yeah, the war effort really needed all of America's nylon for parachutes and tires and flak vests. So the ladies got their nylon hose for about two weeks, then they were cut off once more.

But by the end of the war three different companies were producing versions of nylon, improving on the original until they could mix it with cotton fibers in order to create easy to wash, wrinkle free shirts. And more importantly, cranking out those sexy pantyhose. And we all know what happened when soldiers came home to see their wives wearing the miracle material that had saved so many lives during the war:

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For more modern brands created during tough times, check out 6 Global Corporations Started by Their Founder's Shitty Luck. Or learn about some inventors that fortune favored, in 5 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World.

And stop by Linkstorm (Updated Today!) to see how many Twinkies David Wong can eat in one sitting.

Or find out what happened when the Red Army listened to "Beat It."

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