Free flowing table salt was first invented in the UK by adding up to 3% phosphate salts with sodium chloride. Legend has it that a Scottish pharmacist tried to fortify the condiment for his daughter by blending calcium phosphate with rock salt and serendipitously discovered it's anti caking properties.
A company named Cerebos was formed in 1894 to mass produce the salt. To market the novel product, they went with the image of a boy chasing a bird whilst trying to pour salt on it with the tagline "See how it runs", referring to the old wives tale that one can paralyse a bird by putting salt on its tail.
The brand survives to this day and remains popular in the commonwealth countries, although the original phosphate based formulation is no longer used due to both cost and potential health effects.
Do you think an Australian Emporium might do okay in SF?
Australian in that context could include a very wide range of Greek, Italian, Croatian, and Lebanese, goodies to pad out a small goods shop with more traditional Australian fare.
It could probably be a successful add-on to an already existing "world" store of some sort, the kind you find in Little Italy or Chinatown. It might take some time to grow but it would eventually be known to those who wanted it.
As a note - if you're ever looking for a foreign product, you can write the US distributor (or the main headquarters if there doesn't seem to be one) asking if there are any retailers in your area; there often are but they can be small and hard to find (no web inventory, etc).
The double entendre is what made it so catchy.
The saying was first [1] and the company is now trying to rewrite history.
Another fun fact:
Morton (tehnically, Morton Norwich) made other chemicals as well, including rocket fuel. The fuels were marked up so highly, that - together with a company called Thiokol - they decided they could make and fly the whole rocket engine cheaper than NASA could.
Their first attempt at rocket building was the Challenger, which blew up less than two minutes after launch, and took with it 7 people, and the Morton-Thiokol partnership.
> Morton (tehnically, Morton Norwich) made other chemicals as well, including rocket fuel. The fuels were marked up so highly, that - together with a company called Thiokol - they decided they could make and fly the whole rocket engine cheaper than NASA could.
That's...not really true. Thiokol and Morton Norwich merged in 1982; Morton-Thiokol did a lot, wasn't centered on a proposal to “make and fly the whole rocket engine cheaper than NASA could”, and, in fact, the rocket engine business they had after the merger was the same one Thiokol had before the merger, just with the new entity’s name. Thiokol had been a contractor on the shuttle program since the 1970s.
> Their first attempt at rocket building was the Challenger, which blew up less than two minutes after launch
No, it wasn't. Thiokol was the contractor for the SRB motor segments from well before the merger, and Thiokol and then Morton-Thiokol made the motor segments for the SRBs for all of the launches before the 1986 Challenger disaster (and all of them after, though some under different names, after Thiokol was purchased.)
> and the Morton-Thiokol partnership.
Morton-Thiokol wasn't a partnership, but it's true that most of the chemical business was spun out as Morton in 1989, with the propulsion business staying as Thiokol. This wasn't really an unwinding of the merger; Thiokol had a substantial chemic business before the merger. It was a novel split of the combined business that happened to use the branding from the old components because it was available.
> Their first attempt at rocket building was the Challenger
>> No, it wasn't. Thiokol was the contractor for the SRB motor segments from well before the merger
I don't see how that differs. The first rocket made by Morton after the --partnership-- merger was the Challenger.
My great uncle was the CEO of Morton, and from him I heard (as a child) that the decision to make the engine was a direct result of the huge markup they had on the fuel. But the details are obviously fuzzy [like, maybe he was really CTO...], and its good to have some more facts.
IMO, The whole "Morton makes rockets" is interesting, no matter how you spin it.
> The first rocket made by Morton after the --partnership-- merger was the Challenger.
Sorry, but that's just too inaccurate. Challenger was the name of an orbiter (one of several), the whole system was called the Space Shuttle, and one part of the system were the SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters), and Morton-Thiokol was responsible for the actual rocket motor part of the SRBs.
In this context it's "Their first attempt at rocket building was the Challenger, which blew up less than two minutes after launch."
The companies merged in the summer of 1982, right? The first Shuttle launch after the merger was STS-5, when Columbia launched in November 1982. Doesn't that count as Morton-Thiokol's first attempt?
(FWIW, Tiokol's first attempts were in the 1940s. And of course MTI had many successful attempts before the Challenger explosion.)
Yep, clearly it wasn’t referring to the disaster not the orbiter. Further what’s important for accuracy of the statement was when the SRB’s used in each launch where built or refurbished not when the actual launch occurred.
Thus it turns the quote is completely unambiguous and factually accurate.
Okay, so having the contract wasn't the key factor.
Instead, the proper interpretation of sam_goody's comment requires us knowing ... what, exactly? When the last Thiokol employee touched the the engine? When Morton Thiokol made the first design change? (https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm says there was a design change when 'new Randolph putty was eventually substituted for the old putty in the summer of 1983', but that started in 1982, before the merger.)
So, when exactly was that?
What decided the moment when we can say the SRB motor units were something was Morton Thiokol's first attempt at rocket building, and not Thiokol's?
So, a solid-rocket motor is not exactly a motor (like a liquid-fuel one) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-propellant_rocket but if that's the term used I'm happy with it, especially given there's a nozzle with directional control.
> The first rocket made by Morton after the --partnership-- merger was the Challenger
Challenger technically was a rocket, but Morton Thiokol didn't make it. They did make SRB motors (which were the cause of the disaster), but the merger was in 1982. The Challenger disaster was in 1986. There were a lot of shuttle flights in between, and there wasn't a four year stockpile of SRB motors (there was some stockpile, though, which was a problem with the disaster.) The first flight with M-T manufactured SRB motors wasn't the Challenger disaster. (It may have been one of many of the earlier flights of Challenger, though.)
Heck, the disaster wasn't even the first shuttle flight with M-T SRB motors after NASA and M-T had identified the design problem, and M-T engineers had come up with a redesign (the first flight after that was Challenger, but not the disaster.) But it was a flight while they were still using pre-redesign SRBs, which was part of the problem.
> My great uncle was the CEO of Morton, and from him I heard (as a child) that the decision to make the engine was a direct result of the huge markup they had on the fuel.
Thiokol was in propulsion before the merger, and was chosen as the contractor for the SRB motors before the merger. It's possible that among the reasons for the merger was something Morton brought which enhanced the economics of that, but the merger had nothing to do with the decision to make rocket engines for the shuttle (which had nothing to do with doing it “better than NASA“, NASA’s use of contractors was routine for spaceflight programs, not something Thiokol sold them on uniquely for the shuttle program.)
The claim that the saying originated with the Morton slogan seemed fishy to me too.
So thanks for doing the digging. I upvoted you, and everyone else who linked to earlier usages.
If Morton Salt is trying to take credit for coming up with the saying, shame on them, but somehow I doubt they are. So doubly shame on historydaily.org for pushing a false narrative.
It goes to show that you can't blindly trust whatever you read, even on a .org site.
Very early on people were taught (in school!) that .com meant it was a business, and would likely be moderately correct about that business, .net was for networks, and .org was a organization that would very likely be truthful. Fake information would only come from .coms, and you could certainly trust .gov.
Of course, even then slashdot.org existed so the distinction wasn't really effective; later it DID become a bit of a signal because the "big three" were more expensive than .biz and friends so the latter became known for scam/spam sites.
Now it's all completely random and doesn't matter at all.
As your sibling comment mentions, people used to be taught (apparently in school, but I went to school a bit early for TLDs to be part of the curriculum) about the meaning of the TLDs.
It has never been the case that you needed to be any particular kind of organisation (or an organisation at all) to get a .org, but in the early days it did tend to be used more by non-profits and the like.
It was a failed o-ring from launching in too cold of temperatures that caused the Challenger disaster though, not a failure of the rocket fuel. The engineers that understood the danger to the o-rings objected to the launch and would not sign off on it, but they were overruled by NASA's broken management culture at the time and the rest is history. There was a thorough investigation and it placed the blame squarely on NASA management for the root cause of launching under conditions that were dangerous to the shuttle design.
This was the investigation largely carried out by Richard Feynman, who ignored much of the other investigators to actually get to the root of the issue.
And because the Shuttle had two launch sites, one on either coast. And because the different segments had different propellant profiles for different stages of flight. And because inspection and manufacturing in segments is a lot easier.
Thanks for this! That being said, I think that makes it an even better slogan. Taking something that was well known and using it in a new context where the meaning was, in fact, reversed. Kind of brilliant.
This brought a smile, my father was a sales manager for Morton Salt. Growing up our family was flooded with gear featuring that little girl and her umbrella. As a kid I wanted no part of the brand merchandise. The single item that I used was a metal wastebasket my Dad gave me for my dorm room. Still have it decades later, it's a reminder of my family's history.
Morton Salt was a great employer until it wasn't. A young president decided to fire all the employees over 55. He reasoned they were too expensive and it would make room for younger employees that cost less and it would increase earnings. Raising the stock price would increase his compensation.
The young president was gone in a year after the stock collapsed. The company has been sold four or five times since and has gone from the industry leader to an also ran. My Dad was a few years away from retirement but serendipity reigned and he got another job and did OK.
> A young president decided to fire all the employees over 55. He reasoned they were too expensive and it would make room for younger employees that cost less and it would increase earnings. Raising the stock price would increase his compensation.
It was in the mid-seventies. Some employees did sue, it took ten years and they didn't receive much. The lawyer did OK though ;<(. My father chose not to participate.
The Congress passed an age discrimination law in 1967 but at the last minute it was significantly weakened by lobbyists. The law was updated in 1986 and that's when the gates opened to people suing and getting sizeable awards.
This seems to be pseudo-history at best, the saying is centuries old in some form or another - Wiktionary has "it never rains, but it pours" at 1772, and even then it was being given as a trite saying.
Maybe it popularised the modern wording, but the story in the article isn't going for that angle at all.
Even without the historical evidence, the slogan seems an unlikely coinage without the existing idiom (surely "when it rains, Morton pours" would be more likely), and I don't know how you'd get from the marketing slogan to an idiom about misfortune.
It's a shame. Stories like this are fascinating when they turn out to be true. Like how "bucket list" entered the American vernacular so quickly and thoroughly that there are many people who believe the movie was named after a preexisting common phrase.
it certainly seemed like the culture was ready for a catchy name for the concept, and even if it indeed hadn't been independently coined previously, people were ready to accept it
nowadays though we've got zuckerberg pretending like he invented the term 'metaverse'
My grandmother was the idiom queen (by the time the dementia really took hold, she was communicating in trite phrases just like 'kids these days' communicate in memes) and this was one of her favourites.
The meaning of the saying is fairly straightforward - "pours" being more voluminous than "rains", it's like saying "it never trickles but it floods". Related of course to the London bus, where you wait for ages and then 3 show up at once.
Morton's seems to take the sentiment, but change the meaning - it rains AND it pours, because the "it" changes between those two verbs. A clever play on words to change the meaning of and old idiom - maybe similar to Tesco's "Every Little Helps" that's catchy because it's similar and yet different - but as you say, definitely not the origin of the trite saying about misfortune or luck.
The inaccuracies aside (about them inventing the phrase whole cloth), it's a nice piece about advertising.
Anecdotally, I tend to use salt without the anti caking additives because I have a salt wasting condition, so I'm on a doctor prescribed high salt diet. When I've suggested sea salt to others with my condition, they have just lost their minds that it clumps and looks funny.
Historically, that was the norm for salt. It seems like a weird thing to be so hung up on, given the seriousness of the condition.
Having grown up on a sea salt diet near the Mediterranean – put some rice grains in your salt shaker and other containers. It draws moisture and prevents clumping (to an extent).
And hey if it does clump just bang it hard on the table.
In the Southern US that has been the practice for a long time (also a hot & humid environment!). The rice grains are too large to pass through the holes in the shaker but will sometimes clog them, so you have to shake a bit harder.
Several years ago they ran all their old logos on their salt containers with a little story about the logo. It was really fun to see! For some reason my parents needed a bunch of salt (lots of cooking, saline rinses too if I remember right) so I got to see two or three different iterations on the design.
When I was a kid it was fairly common to see salt shakers with grains of uncooked rice in them. This was to keep the salt from sticking together in a humid environment.
Yup, very common in Brazil in general. It's not infallible though, on very humid places such as coastal cities you will still get salt clumping with rice in it, usually on the sieve of the shaker...
I think yes to the first question. Rice is extremely hygroscopic. In a fairly famous novel, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, there’s even an instance of a wooden ship with a cargo hold filled with rice breaking up and sinking at sea because of a small leak the crew was unable to detect in time. I’m unable to find a direct source on this, but it’s claimed this is not just a story but actually happened in real life too. The author, C.S. Forester, used stories he had heard and read about in the Navy Gazette to form the basis for his historical fiction novel.
I can't see how this would work. Salt seems much more hygroscopic to me, and if the rice was actually asbording a meaningful amount of moisture you'd have it spoiling. If anything I'd bet the salt is keeping the rice dry.
Not to mention the open container design salt shakers inherently share which would imply a rather limited lifetime of the kernels.
I'm fairly certain this has to be primary a mechanical mechanism, if it even works at all. I recall plenty of salt shakers at airbnbs or whatnot that were quite soggy regardless of the amount of rice inside the shaker.
Personal theory: as the humidity changes, the rice absorbs and releases water, expanding and contracting. That movement breaks up incipient salt caking.
(Yes: we have rice in our salt shaker. All the best people do.)
I’m impressed all of the pieces work together so well. I always wondered about both the girl and the slogan. This is the kind of thing they would’ve fictionalized in Mad Men.
That logo has mystified me since childhood. Why is the little girl carrying a container of salt in the rain? Was she sent to purchase it? Could the purchase not wait until better weather?
Why is the container disproportionately huge? Or is she only six inches tall?
And finally, so the container leaks salt if at any angle but upright? Why does Morton refuse to put better lids on their products?
I always figured it was about salting roads and sidewalks for better traction and to keep them from icing up. Can't say I've seen table salt used that way, though.
I was born about 1970 and spent the next 11 years of my life learning to bake with my mom. 1 teaspoon from the 1968 girl, who seemed so very much my peer, was all my chocolate chip cookies needed.
I learned non caking agent when growing crystal. The non-iodized salt from grocery store grow into strange looking white and cubioid shape crystals. That salt has yellow prussiate of soda in it.
You'll die without enough salt, and prior to modern prepackaged food, and over salty snacks, and over salted restaruant food, you needed salt in your diet. Badly!
If you want to eat healthy, and decide to cook all your own food, be prepared to use more salt. You'll need it compared to that prepackaged food. Especially in the summer, when you sweat more.
Failure to do so may leave you craving salty snacks, or lacking in energy.
> But high salt diets aren’t in and of themselves a problem.
You are directly contradicting my link:
> In 2019, a diet high in sodium was responsible for 44·9 million (95% UI 13·0–94·7) DALYs and 1·89 million (0·477–4·19) deaths. It was the leading dietary risk factor for attributable DALYs.
Your one paper is based on on study using health and diet surveys.
A comprehensive review of the literature found that:
"When reviewing the evidence for an upper level of 5.8 g/day, it becomes apparent that neither the supporting studies selected by the health institutions, nor randomized controlled trials and prospective observational studies disregarded by the health institutions, document that a salt intake below this 5.8 g, has beneficial health effects. Although there is an association between salt intake and blood pressure, both in randomized controlled trials and in observational studies, this association is weak, especially in non-obese individuals with normal blood pressure. Furthermore a salt intake below 5.8 g is associated with the activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosteron system, an increase in plasma lipids and increased mortality."
What you say makes no sense. It makes no sense that "prior to modern prepackaged food", throughout the hundreds of thousands of years that anatomically modern humans have existed, we needed salt in our diet "badly". If we did, we would have died out as a species, because for most of the time we existed we did not have access to salt. We had no salt mines, no salt flats, etc etc.
What makes a lot more sense is that we can get all the sodium we need from the food we eat, given a balanced and varied diet, like the omnivores that we are. In fact, this is the only thing that makes sense: that our bodies are tuned to our natural diet and that we can get enough nutrition from the food our bodies expect without the need for any additives.
So let's be honest here: the only reason that modern people salt their food is for the taste, and nothing else (not even preservation is an issue anymore, with modern refrigeration technology). Which is fine and dandy, but not when it becomes an obsession and it causes overconsumption that can cause health problems.
It's nonsense is what it is. Do you think the steppe nomads ate "salt water fish and also sellfish"? The people who lived in mountains, in the center of Europe or Africa and far away from sea?
Recorded history is 5000 years btw but we've been around for more than 200,000 years, and most people definitely did not live near the ocean for all that period.
Instead of telling me to "do a little research" you show me what "research" you did that supports your preposterous ideas.
It's not that simple. Sodium intake is primarily correlated with processed/snack food intake (or probably, in some regions, with salt-heavy reductions served by restaurants or street food vendors), not with excessive use of table salt.
A company named Cerebos was formed in 1894 to mass produce the salt. To market the novel product, they went with the image of a boy chasing a bird whilst trying to pour salt on it with the tagline "See how it runs", referring to the old wives tale that one can paralyse a bird by putting salt on its tail.
http://cosgb.blogspot.com/2010/09/cerebos-ltd.html
The brand survives to this day and remains popular in the commonwealth countries, although the original phosphate based formulation is no longer used due to both cost and potential health effects.