1. Betty White Is Actually Not the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Improvements to the slicing machine made the loaves appear less sloppy, and sliced bread eventually gained in popularity until it became an American staple. By then, the early and over-the-top advertising puffery had caught on with the public, and made the introduction of sliced bread a marker and frame of reference in the popular lexicon for subsequent claims of greatness.
So, could Betty White possibly be the greatest thing since sliced bread? Well, America’s sweetheart and a most beloved grandmotherly icon was born on January 17th, 1922. That was about six and a half years before the Chillicothe Baking Company sold its first loaf of sliced bread, on July 7th, 1928. Since her birth predates sliced bread, it follows that Betty White could not be the best thing sliced bread. Thus, as a matter of straightforward historic fact, the answer must be in the negative: Betty White is not the best thing since sliced bread. However, sliced bread can make the argument that it is the best thing since Betty White.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
BBC – Trial by Ordeal: When Fire and Water Determined Guilt
Buzzfeed – 16 Strange and Surprising Facts About Medieval England
Cracked – 44 Important Parts of History You’re Picturing Wrong
Encyclopedia Britannica – Albert Einstein
Harvard Magazine, July-August 2003 – Who Built the Pyramids?
Historia Cartarum – What Does a Stick of Eels Get You?
History Extra – 8 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Medieval Elections
Houston Chronicle – Historical Events You Had No Idea Happened at Around the Same Time
Huffington Post – 8 Surprising Historical Facts That Will Change Your Concept of Time Forever
Live Science – Albert Einstein: The Life of a Brilliant Physicist
Mental Floss – France Stopped Using the Guillotine as Star Wars Premiered
National Geographic – Doggerland, The Europe That Was
Ranker – Were Medieval People Really Drunk on Beer and Wine All the Time?
Time Magazine, July 7th, 2015 – How Sliced Bread Became ‘The Greatest Thing’
Times of London, January 13th, 2018 – Our Grandfather John Tyler, the US President Born in 1790
National Geographic Channel – Woolly Mammoths Wiped Out by Grass Invasion?
Wikipedia – St Scholastica Day Riot
World Atlas – Did Woolly Mammoths Still Roam Parts of the Earth When the Great Pyramids Were Built?