The slinky was invented by a mechanical engineer named Richard James.

In 1943, James noticed that a torsion spring that fell off a shelf
began to bounce around with some unusual twists and turns. He took
the spring home to his wife Betty and showed her the spring’s unusual
behavior. He decided he could make the spring action into a toy and
began working on selecting the right spring steel for the coil. It
takes about 80 feet of wire to make a 2” slinky.

James’ wife came up with the name by looking in the dictionary for
appropriate words to describe the slinky action.
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Other toy question . . .

What is the longest running unchanged plastic molded toy (with a
display) that has no CRT, LCD or LED screen?

Etch-a-sketch, and it’s still around! (By the way, I read somewhere
That the Vu-Master stopped production awhile ago.)

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to own an Etch-a-sketch,
Vu-master and Slinky.

You can now receive an email automatically when the Brainemail blog page is updated. Just create a free account at Blogstream.com and login. After you login, go to this blog page (http://brainemail.blogstream.com) and click on "BM" in the bar at the very top of this page. This will allow you to add this page to your Blogstream bookmarks as well as be notified by email when the page is updated.

Accounts here are free and Blogstream does not spam.

There are probably as many answers to this question as there are
April Fools.

The best one I have heard is that it goes back to the introduction
of the Gregorian Calendar in 16th century France. At that time,
France celebrated New Years Day on April 1st. When Pope Gregory
introduced his new calendar, he elected to move New Year’s Day to
Jan. 1.

The only problem was that the word did not get out with any great
speed about the swap of the holiday date. The people who continued
to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1st became the first April
Fools.
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My mother told me that my grandfather changed his birthday from
April 1st to April 2nd after he came to this country to avoid being
called an April Fool. When I searched the family records in the
old country, I discovered his birthday was actually April 13th! I
wonder which bad date he was trying to avoid?

The game is known by many names, including Nine Mens Morris,
Morelles, Merrills, Merels, Mill or just plain Morris.

There appears to be two forms of this ancient game called Three Mens
Morris. One version has diagonals and the other does not. The
diagonals form is essentially the same game as tic-tac-toe. A board
of this type has been found that was carved into the temple at Kurna,
Egypt around 1440 BC, although it may have been done at a later time.

The Chinese also played the game around 500BC, according to a man
named Thomas Hyde.

The Romans are known to have played the game.

The game was played in England as far back as the 1300s and
Shakespeare mentioned it in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Act 2,
Scene 2 - "The Nine Mens Morris is filled up with mud".

Apparently there is an existing Morris Club that you can search out
on Yahoo. (I can only guess how old some of the members might be!)

Besides the obvious, what were the types of questions asked many of
our immigrant ancestors as they came into the U.S. in the early part
of the 20th century?

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About 40% of all Americans trace themselves through ancestors that
came through Ellis Island between the 1890s and the 1920s.

My family is no exception.

Here are some of the less obvious “turn-of-the century” questions . .

Do you have $50 in your pocket?
Who paid for your passage? A company or government?
Who’s house are you going to?
Are they a relative or a friend?
Do you have a ticket to get there?
Are you an anarchist?
Have you been in prison?
Were you a ward of charity?
Are you crippled? How long?
Do you have any deformities?
Are you a polygamist?
Have you been offered a job?

The Ellis Island history center is now open on line and you can
search for your relatives, regardless of port of entry. Check
the details at the American Family Immigration History Center site
at . . . . {I am a charter member.]

http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/
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Source: List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for The United States
Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival – from the actual records of
my grandparents.