Kellogg introduced Rice Krispies in 1928. Posted 2/01/2012

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In 1931, seventeen-year-old Jackie Mitchell, one of the first female pitchers in professional baseball, struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Posted 5/01/2015

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By 1920 nearly 50% of all American college students were women, but they could not receive a degree from a man’s college even if they completed all the classes and exams.  It was not until 1923 that women could receive a college degree. Posted 9/15/2015

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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt allowed only female journalists at her press conferences to ensure that newspapers would have to hire women. Posted 3/15/2017

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The U.S. Women’s bureau estimated that just six months after the stock market crash in October of 1929, two million women, many single, had lost their jobs. Posted 10/01/2017

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Flappers were causing shockwaves on the beach by wearing one-piece bathing suits that revealed bare arms and legs instead of the customary layers of clothing. This caused conservative women to begin a crusade for modesty, however, it was men who were sent out to measure hemlines and manhandle the girls. Posted 8/01/2019

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It was thought that all the flapper did was have a cocktail and smoke a cigarette.  However, statistics showed that while she drove and danced and all the rest, she also went to school in greater numbers than any women before her. Posted 9/01/2020

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Scrabble was conceived during the Great Depression by an unemployed New York architect named Alfred Mosher Butts, who figured Americans could use a bit of distraction during the bleak economic times.  After determining what he believed were the most enduring games in history — board games, numbers games like dice or cards, and letter games like crossword puzzles — he combined all three.  It took him seven years to come up with the right balance of numbered letters.  He chose the frequency and the distribution of the tiles by counting letters on the pages of the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune and The Saturday Evening Post.  He called the game Lexiko.  He tried to sell the game to Parker Brothers and to Milton Bradley, but they weren’t interested.  Even the Patent Office rejected his application not once, but twice.  Starting in 1938, every single giant toymaker in the United States rejected Alfred Butts’ idea for a new word game.  Ironically, Alfred Butts didn’t like to spell.

He added a board to Lexiko so words could be created crossword style and called the game Criss-Cross Words.  He made the games himself, hand-lettering the tiles and gluing them to balsa wood.  They sold for $2.  Eventually he met James Brunot, who saw the potential in the game.  It was Brunot who changed the name to Scrabble.

Brunot bought strips of scrap lumber, silk-screened letters onto them, and hired woodworkers to saw them into tiles.  He ordered the boards from a New York game company, and he and his wife assembled the games in their living room--and still they lost money. The Brunots soldiered on, selling a few hundred games a week, until one day in 1952, when they came home from a week’s vacation to find orders for more than 2,000 games!

According to legend, a Macy’s department store executive had discovered the game while at a summer resort and ordered them for the department store shelves.  To keep up with demand, James and Helen Brunot moved production to a converted woodworking shop and hired workers to put the game together.  By late 1952, they could only make 6,000 games a week — not enough to keep up with orders.

In 1953, 800,000 Scrabble games were sold, but the Brunots still couldn’t keep up with demand.  Christmas shoppers had to either put their names on a waiting list or linger by a store counter, hoping for a new shipment to arrive.

Scrabble sales peaked in 1954, with 4 million copies sold. Today 150 million Scrabble games have been sold in 121 countries in 29 languages.

Alfred Butts, who ironically didn’t like to spell, retired on his Scrabble royalties. He liked to say, ‘One-third went to taxes, I gave one-third away, and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life.

Posted 12/2022

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