GUM

This topic is coming out of random searches today for a good topic. Yesterday's Martini Glass was pretty high in the viewership so I have to do something just as good today. Chewing gum! I personally am not a fan of gum, I'll have a piece on the rare occasion, but I never buy packages of gum or just chew it because I like the taste.

• Prehistoric men and women chewed on lumps of tree resin for pure enjoyment, making them the first-ever gum chewers in recorded history. 
• In fact, the study of civilization has found that almost every culture chewed some kind of "gum."Ancient Greeks routinely gnawed on tree resin to clean their teeth and freshen their breath, and called their treat "mastiche." 
• Native Americans often chewed on tree sap, and while early settlers combined tree sap and beeswax to soften the chew.
• The first commercial chewing gum - State of Maine Spruce Gum - was introduced in 1848 by John B. Curtis.
  
• The very first bubble gum was invented by Frank Henry Fleer in 1906. He called it Blibber-Blubber
• In the early 1900s, William Wrigley Jr. was one of the first to promote the sale of branded goods through advertising and used it to make Wrigley's Spearmint gum and Juicy Fruit best sellers that are still around today
• Spearmint, peppermint and cinnamon are among the most popular flavors of chewing gum today
• The color of the first successful bubble gum was pink, because it was the only color the inventor had left, and that remains the predominant color today
• The largest bubble ever blown was 23 inches in diameter.
• The country with the largest number of chewing gum manufacturers is Turkey, with more then 60 producers.
• Chewing gum can improve memory, say UK psychologists. They found that people who chewed throughout tests of both long-term and short-term memory produced significantly better scores than people who did not.
• Sugarless or sugar-free gums first entered the marketplace in the early 1950s.
• The longest gum wrapper chain on record was 7,400 feet in length (nearly one and a half miles) and was made by Cathy Ushler of Redmond, Washington between 1969 and 1992.
• Chewing gum burns around 11 calories per hour
• Back in the 1920’s, prohibition increased gum sales because people needed to mask the alcohol on their breath. When prohibition was enacted, Adam’s Clove gum hit the market with the slogan: “It takes your breath away!”