Today's ensemble celebrates Towel Day (yesterday, 25 May) and Cellophane Tape Day (tomorrow)! Towel Day annually honors the life and work of Douglas Adams (1952-2001), most famous as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which tells us that a towel is "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." Adams tells us that the primary message of the HHGTTG is captured by the comforting words "DON'T PANIC!" on the interactive book's cover. Towel Day was first celebrated in 2001, two weeks after Adams' death (to give his worldwide friends time to prepare their towels). We created my towel-tie exactly ten years ago!
Tomorrow is the 94th anniversary of the patenting of cellophane tape. So I have a band of wide tape to hold my tie! Richard Drew had invented paper-based masking tape for 3M in 1925, to help create sharp borderlines for painting. The original tape was not very sticky, prompting one frustrated painter to tell Drew to "take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it." (Scotch means stingy.) Drew improved his tape with a cellulose base, which became known as Scotch Brand Cellulose Tape. It became a household fixture (haha) during the Great Depression, as a way to fix or seal almost anything.
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