MARSHMALLOW PEEPS _ Easter is just under 3 weeks away, and the Peeps are everywhere. In 1917, Sam Born, a Russian immigrant, opened a small candy shop in New York City that sold chocolates and other confections. When the company grew, Born relocated it to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and named it Just Born, after a slogan he’d coined to advertise the freshness of his products.
… In 1953, Just Born bought a local Pennsylvania confectioner called the Rodda Candy Company. Although Just Born acquired Rodda for its jelly-bean-making capabilities, the Born family was fascinated with the three-dimensional marshmallow Easter chicks, called Peeps, which Rodda was also making at the time. In 1953, it took Rodda 27 hours to make one Peep. Just Born mechanized Peep production and was able to bring the confection to consumers on a mass scale by 1954.
… Why chicks? No one at Just Born could explain why the Rodda Candy Company thought yellow chicks made for appropriate Easter candies. Company spokesmen also couldn’t confirm whether Rodda was making marshmallow confections in other shapes in 1953, although Rodda did manufacture marshmallow eggs at one point. Whatever shapes Rodda was making, however, Just Born zeroed in on the chick; the company didn’t start distributing the marshmallow candy in other shapes (such as bunnies) until the 1960s.
SIGNS YOU’RE NOT READY FOR SPRING
• You’ve finally figured out how to start the snow blower on the first try.
• Your growing beer belly blocks the view of your feet, making it hard to put on flip-flops.
• You’ve discovered you don’t need to play softball as an excuse to drink beer.
• You haven’t taken down the Christmas tree yet.
• Who needs spring when you’ve rigged up a hammock in your living room?
WHY THERE’S A POPPING SOUND WHEN WE CRACK OUR KNUCKLES _ For decades, scientists debated the cause of the popping sound when we crack our knuckles. Using computer models, a research team from France discovered the answer. The sound of knuckles cracking is caused by a “collapsing cavitation bubble in the synovial fluid inside a metacarpophalangeal joint during an articular release.” More simply, it’s the sound of microscopic gas bubbles collapsing — but not fully popping — inside the finger joint. Scientists first proposed this theory 50 years ago, but the French study used a combination of lab experiments and a computer simulation to support the case. Seems weird, but scientists have been investigating this bodily quirk since the early 1900s. The whole phenomenon takes only about 300 milliseconds to unfold. What scientists have agreed upon is that knuckle cracking is not something everyone is able to do, not every finger can produce the popping sound, and it takes about 20 minutes before a knuckle can be cracked again.
