As kids we bought these wonderful pink rubber balls for 10 cents and
had a lot of fun playing stick ball and stoop ball. Back in the late
40s and early 50s, more household items were made from plain rubber
than today, since modern plastics and artificial rubber were just
starting to come into the marketplace.

We had rubber hoses, rubber boots, “rubbers” (for your shoes), inner
tubes and playground balls to name a few. (I can still remember that
unique smell of a new rubber product – which was probably the mold
release agent.)

We were taught in school that Charles Goodyear discovered
vulcanization in the 19th century, by accidentally spilling one of
his experimental concoctions onto a hot stove. This happened in
Sandy Hook, CT and spawned the rubber industry of the Naugatuck
river valley.

It turns out that the Mesoamerican Indians of southern Mexico and
Latin America were using rubber balls for over 3000 years. Rubber
balls have been uncovered dating back to 1500 BC. The Indians
discovered vulcanization using morning glory roots in the concoction. Vulcanization of rubber was necessary to turn the gooey rubber into
something hard that would bounce.

The Indians played a ritual ball game on courts built near temples.
When prisoners of war were forced to play the game, they were starved
before they were put on the court against their conquerors. When they
lost the ritual game they were ceremoniously executed on the court!
Their blood was spilled to appease the gods of the underworld.

A descendent of this ancient game is still played in one district of southwestern Mexico (Sinaloa) and the game is called Ulama. (The
Aztec word for ballgame is ullamaliztli). Some people are trying to
preserve the modern game as an ancient cultural and historic
artifact. Women also played the game in ancient times as well as in
today’s modern version. (No, they do not execute today’s losers!)

Documentation indicates the Mesoamerican Indians also used the
rubber for waterproofing clothes and weapons. It was formed into
sandals (Nike, look out!) and figurines. It was also burned as
incense and used as glue. The Spanish were intrigued by the rubber
and brought the plants back to Spain in the 1500s. The Spanish
rubber tress eventually found their way to Malaysia, a major rubber
growing area

The best bet is the Hanseatic League of Northern Europe. It started
as a loose affiliation of Northern European cities with no formal
rules. Your town’s membership in the League was as simple as
agreeing to participate in a League-sponsored embargo. After over 100
years of operation, the League decided to formally organize in 1358.
The League remained a powerful force in European trade for hundreds
of years and finally withered away in 1648.

Poor man’s fertilizer was usually considered to be a late spring snow.

The snow protects new shoots, allows slow decomposition of organic
matter under the mantle of snow, and permits nutrients to slowly leach
into the soil because of the slow melt rate.

"Be thankful if there is snow cover, often called "the poor
man's fertilizer", as snow protects the crowns of perennials
from heaving, and prevents any covered foliage from drying
in the winter's coldest winds."
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. . . . and don’t forget to make hay while the sun shines!

Most know that The Jazz Singer is considered the first commercial
movie called a “talkie”. This 1927 movie featured Al Jolson and was
actually part “talkie” and part silent film.

There were various sound experiments in the early 1920s, before the
release of The Jazz Singer, that included experiments by Lee DeForest
with a process known as Phonofilm. His process competed with the
other process known as Vitaphone. [Lee DeForest is considered the
inventor of the first electron amplifying tube.]

It turns out others experimented with sound synchronized to movies,
too.

It was known that Edison experimented with synchronizing his wax
cylinder machine with a movie clip in the mid 1890s. A film clip
existed, but not the sound source.

Recently, a wax cylinder was uncovered that was linked to Edison’s
experiment. The cylinder had been broken in several pieces. The
Edison National Historic Site people repaired the cylinder and had
the film clip (now housed by the Library of Congress) edited by
Hollywood’s Walter Murch. He used computer techniques to turn the
clip from the old 40 frames per second to a more modern 30 frames
per second. This gave the action in the film clip a more natural
feel. The movie included a man playing a violin and two others
dancing. A third man walked across the stage.

Finally, they laboriously synced the old repaired sound source to
the re-framed movie clip and made a new sound-linked copy. This 10
second performance can now be considered the oldest surviving
“talkie”. There is even someone back stage talking that can be
heard as they cue the performers. “The rest of you fellows ready?
Go ahead!”

The violinist is believed to be William K. L. Dickson, Edison’s
chief movie researcher.

It is quite remarkable that we now have a movie clip with sound that
is an artifact from the late 19th century. The entire reel lasts
about one minute with an introduction, three showings of the clip
and credits.

You can get old historic and early experimental films on Amazon.com.
(This is not an ad.)

I have an interest in trivia and will be posting trivia items at this location.