​Chris Evans’ transformation started in Captain America: The First Avenger where he was turned into a short, slender guy from a 220-lb man. For this reason, another person was used whose body was “attached” to the character’s face. In the new film, Steve Rogers appears as a nice old man made possible by makeup artists.

​Almost all Marvel movies are connected, and the actors easily travel through time and appear in different looks. Sometimes only makeup artists are responsible for these transformations, but very often, the help of visual effect experts is needed. For example, the same people who worked on Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button worked on making Robert Downey Jr.’s character look younger in Captain America: Civil War.

​In the new Avengers: Endgame, many characters change their looks, but the green monster’s changes are more mental. Mark Ruffalo’s character finally achieved harmony with his inner beast and turned into a cute, charming giant with stubble, fashionable glasses, and a size 16 XL wool cardigan.

​Chris Hemsworth’s character has changed drastically over the last 8 years. In the first movie, it seems that too much perhydrol was used. But fortunately, in the Avengers films, his eyebrows and beard became darker and his hair got even longer. But the transformation in Endgame shocked even the most loyal Marvel fans. No one was prepared for the beer belly and flabby body on the God of Thunder.

​Captain Marvel takes place in the ’90s, so Marvel studio had to rejuvenate Samuel L. Jackson and make him 25 years younger. In the previous films, this expensive and difficult trick was used only in a few scenes, and in Captain Marvel, colonel of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, remains young throughout the whole movie. It’s hard to imagine how much time the visual effect artists had to spend on the actor to get the desired look.

​After an accident, Bucky, Captain America’s best friend, gets captured and turned into Winter Soldier with a bionic arm. Steve helps him remember who he is and the doctors from the secret country of Wakanda cure Barnes, and he then joins the Avengers’ side. In several scenes, Sebastian’s real arm was removed with the help of computer technology.

​In Ant-Man, 70-year-old Michael Douglas appears 25 years younger, and this transformation is considered to be one of the best experiments in computer visual effects in cinema.

​It would probably be very hard to find a person who has never heard of the Apollo 11 space mission that successfully landed the first 2 people on the moon in 1969. While all the mass media attention was concentrated on NASA and the men who took part in that mission, there were several women who made it all happen, and computer scientist Margaret Hamilton was one of them. The software that she and her team developed helped NASA’s astronauts safely land on the moon.

Back in those days, computer technology was different and Margaret had to deal with paper-punched cards to upload information into room-sized computers that had no interface, working really hard to create and thoroughly test the software. The photo above shows Hamilton standing next to a huge pile of papers containing the navigation software data that she created for the Apollo 11 mission.

​Margaret Sanger was an American feminist and women’s rights activist. Her mother, Anne, had 11 children and several miscarriages which Margaret believed contributed to her mother’s untimely death. Margaret attended Claverack College, trained as a nurse, and then worked as an obstetrical nurse in New York hospitals. Her career in medical care made her notice the correlation between poverty, uncontrolled fertility, and high rates of maternal mortality and deaths caused by illegal abortions.

Margaret Sanger coined the term “birth control” and was fighting for women’s rights to use contraception. Some of her publications and pamphlets about planned parenthood were considered to be immoral, and she faced charges and even had to flee to England in 1914. In 1916, after coming back to the United States, she opened the first birth control clinic. Despite her controversial campaign and the charges that followed, she won the right for doctors to prescribe contraception to their female patients.

​Victoria Woodhull was an American reformer, spiritualist, and women’s rights advocate who is known as the first woman to run for U.S. president in 1872. Woodhull was a good speaker and she often spoke publicly about defending the rights of women and even addressed Congress. Trying to become even more politically active, she organized the Equal Rights Party and ran for U.S. president on the political group’s ticket.

Because of her numerous relationships and radical ideas, Woodhull was strongly criticized by society. Some sources say she didn’t receive any electoral votes in the 1872 election and an unknown but small number of popular votes. Even though her presidential campaign was not successful, she will always stand in history as the first woman who tried to become the president of the United States.

​Rosalind Franklin was a British scientist that made a ground-breaking contribution to the understanding of the molecular structure of DNA and viruses. During World War II she served as a London air raid warden and even worked for the British Coal Utilisation Research Association where she studied carbon and coal for the needs of war.

In 1951 she joined the King’s College in London. When she started her studies there, very little was known about the structure of DNA, however, she soon discovered that DNA molecules had a helical structure with the help of X-ray methods. The work she did enabled other scientists after her to suggest that the DNA structure was a double spiral that consisted of 2 strands wound around each other.

​Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-born American nuclear physicist who greatly contributed to the Manhattan Project at Columbia University and nuclear physics in general. She discovered a way to enrich uranium and experimentally proved that parity could not be conserved for weak nuclear interactions. A series of nuclear experiments she carried out together with 2 male scientists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, led to a Nobel Prize for Yang and Lee in 1957.

Unfortunately, Chien-Shiung Wu herself was excluded, like many other female scientists back in those days. She was well aware of gender inequality and during a scientific conference she said, “I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei, or the mathematical symbols, or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment.”

​Nettie Maria Stevens was an early American biologist and geneticist. She was one of the first scientists to discover that chromosomes determine sex. In 1904 she conducted research in the field of cytology and the regenerative process together with zoologist and geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan who was given a Nobel Prize for this work in 1933. A series of experiments with the yellow mealworms she carried out in 1905 helped her find that a certain combination of chromosomes, X and Y, was responsible for determining the sex of individuals.

​Barbara McClintock was an American cytogeneticist who discovered mobile genetic elements or the so-called “jumping genes” that can appear in different locations within a genome. McClintock made this discovery while studying color variations in kernels of corn, and was awarded a Nobel Prize for this breakthrough in 1983. McClintock’s experiments with corn revealed that genetic information is not stationary and that some genes could move along the chromosome, influencing the neighboring genes.

It’s interesting that even though McClintock’s discovery was way ahead of her time, for many years it was considered too brave and was even ignored by other scientists. She was so frustrated that she stopped giving lectures and publishing results of her work. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s when the scientific community started to acknowledge the results of her earlier work.

​The peculiarities of the physical development of a fetus should be stipulated in a contract. Usually, the clients have to pay the full amount even if a child is born with a medical condition. This happens when a surrogate mother has fulfilled her obligations and the pathology of a fetus is accidental.

In 2014, the world was struck by the story of a baby boy named Gammy. An Australian couple hired a Thai woman to become a surrogate mother for them. The woman got pregnant with twins. One of the twins, the boy, had Down syndrome. So the biological parents left Thailand with the boy’s twin sister. The surrogate mother still received the full compensation.

Is it true that surrogate mothers are usually women with low income?

Surrogate mothers are usually poor and socially disadvantaged women. Surrogacy can significantly increase their quality of life. For example, this is the amount of compensation in different countries of the world:

• USA (California) — $60,000
• Ukraine — $23,000
• Russia — $15,000

Women who are going through financial difficulties can be tempted with high compensation. Unfortunately, the agencies that draw up the contracts with future parents can refuse to pay women the money. This happens rarely, though. Usually the agencies insist that women strictly follow every clause of the contract. For example, a contract says that a surrogate mother is not allowed to lift heavy things, but she buys a bag of potatoes and carries it home. Some agencies can consider these actions as violation of the terms of the contract and can refuse to pay the compensation.

If a surrogate mother doesn’t want to hand over the child, will it be taken by force?

The answer to this question depends on the country where this situation takes place. For example, in Russia, a new citizen should be registered in the civil registry office. The surrogate mother has to sign the documents granting her parental rights to her customers. If she changes her mind after the documents have been signed, the child will be taken by force because officially the customers are its biological parents. But if she refuses to sign, she will become the child’s rightful parent and the child will not be taken away from her.

In 2011, a similar case happened in USA. A woman was contacted via email and she promised to become a surrogate for a wealthy couple. But after giving birth, she refused to hand over the child. The problem was that the biological parents were violent and psychotic people. After 6 months in court, the surrogate mother was allowed to keep the child. The point is that the woman didn’t sign any official documents though she received some compensation. If a contract existed, the case could have been solved in favor of the other party.

Another scandal happened with an American named Mary Beth Whitehead. After giving birth to a daughter, she ran away to another state because she became attached to the newborn. The police found her and returned the child to her legal parents. The court acknowledged Mary Beth Whitehead as the mother of the child and permitted her to visit her daughter who lived with the legal parents. It’s interesting that after reaching the age of 18, the girl legally terminated Mary Beth’s parental rights.

Such situations are rare. Usually, everything goes smoothly and both parties remain happy with the results. American Deborah Bolig, who became a surrogate mother of twins, is a perfect example of this. Currently both families have become friends and send gifts for special occasions to each other.

What will happen if the biological parents and the surrogate mother don’t want to take the child?

Unfortunately, in this case the child will be sent to an orphanage. However, this process can take quite a long time. Authorities will have to decide who the child belongs to, in which city it has to stay, and so on. If the biological parents are foreigners, the newborn can be hung in legal limbo if neither of the countries wants to acknowledge it as their citizen.

A situation like this took place in India where the surrogate mother lived. She was going to give birth to a child for a Japanese couple. But the spouses got divorced before the child was born. Neither the surrogate mother, nor the Japanese mother wanted the child. In accordance with Indian laws, a single father couldn’t adopt a daughter. Thanks to media involvement, the father got permission to take his daughter, who was named Manji, to Japan a few months after her birth.

Why are some women ready to give birth to a stranger’s child for free?

When women don’t want to get paid for giving birth to a stranger’s child, it is called “altruistic surrogacy.” This phenomenon is pretty common in Canada where it is forbidden to pay any compensation to surrogate mothers. The number of women who are ready to do it free of charge has become 4 times bigger over the last decade.

What are the pros of this position:
​

• Giving away a child for free is more ethical than selling it.
• Some people think of surrogacy as a business. Canadian women prove that a child can’t be a subject for sale.

Each of the altruistic surrogate mothers has children of their own, and many of them have become surrogate mothers a few times. BBC even produced a documentary about these women and named it 100 Women: The Surrogates Club.

​Do you consider yourself a person with high moral values? If your answer is yes, you are more likely to be socially unpopular. Scientists from the University of Washington revealed that morally-focused people tend to be less humorous. And this is the reason why others don’t like them that much.

The researchers conducted 4 experiments to prove their point. Over the course of steps 1 and 2 they discovered that virtuous people did not appreciate or make jokes that violated their values. This happens because these people doubt their own ethics while laughing at inappropriate humor. And it proves that morality stifles a sense of humor.

But as we all know, having a funny bone can be pretty handy. Humorous people are believed to be more intelligent, amusing, and friendly. Some specialists say that this is the glue of friendship. Moreover, it can also predict the success of your relationships.

​In an additional series of experiments researchers collected data about moral identity from 70 employees. Afterward, their coworkers rated the participants’ sense of humor and indicated how much they liked them, as well as their popularity among other coworkers. The results confirmed that morally-focused employees were considered less humorous and less popular among their peers.

​So, if you are not able to poke some fun from time to time, you might have problems with making friends because you probably seem unfriendly and stand-offish.

​Researchers from New York City’s Columbia University Medical Center hope that they can get a patient’s own stem cells to grow an anatomically correct tooth. In addition to that, the new tooth will actually grow in a person’s empty socket, even allowing it to merge with the surrounding gum tissue. They’ve already proven the ability to grow the teeth, though not in humans yet.

​According to the Journal of Dental Research, the researchers conducted an experiment using 22 rats. After growth factors were implanted in the rats’ mouths, new bone material regenerated and integrated within 9 weeks. According to the researchers, this is the first time teeth-like structures have been regenerated in a living organism.

If this treatment proves successful in humans, there can be a variety of benefits that come along with the new procedure. Since the tooth is grown in the socket where it will stay, there is also no need to harvest outside stem cells or create an outside environment for the tooth as it grows. Because of this, researchers hope that this will be a more cost-effective solution for patients who can’t afford dental implants. In addition, since the tooth grows right in the mouth, there will likely be less recovery time and it will be less likely for teeth to fail.

​For the time being, however, dental implants are the closest thing we have to help people replace lost teeth. Unfortunately, implants can be painful, require a long healing process, and don’t often adapt to aging mouths, which can cause the implant to fail altogether. That said, this new alternative might become a reality quite soon. Even now, Columbia University has filed patent applications for this new technology and is also looking at ways to make the process commercially available.

​In 1962, Rita Moreno received an Oscar proving her incredible acting talent while wearing a shiny dress, just like the Oscar itself. The dress was made from a real kimono. She loved the dress so much that she kept it in her wardrobe for many years. And in 2018, during the 90th Oscar ceremony, the actress wore the same dress, only slightly tweaked. The upper part of it was remade.

So, here’s a note: favorite dresses can be redesigned and used again.

​Even a small detail like earrings can play an important role sometimes. In 2015, during the premiere of Carol, Cate Blanchett appeared wearing a classic black dress with unusual sleeves that looked like tattoos. The actress moved her hair to one side in order to demonstrate the black earrings that also contributed to her “dark style.” 3 years later, the actress wore this dress in public again. But this time, she wore big bright earrings with her hair down. So, the outfit became a little lighter and more romantic.

So, depending on the size and color, earrings can change the entire look. Choose them wisely, taking your haircut into account. For tied up hair, try long and elegant earrings. If you have short hair, the earrings should be longer than your hair, according to stylists.

​If you are a Queen, why not have as many dresses as you want? But the monarch of Spain has a different opinion about this. In February this year, Letizia showed up at a banquet for the president of Peru and his wife wearing the same dress she had worn 8 years earlier at Westminster, just before the wedding of William and Kate Middleton. But the second time around, the Queen had a lot of additional accessories: a bracelet, a tiara, and a ribbon. The first time, the dress was the main part of her look.

​Often, when we lose or gain some weight, we worry that all of our clothes will have to be replaced. But singer Geri Halliwell has a different opinion that’s quite the opposite: if you wear the same dress but your body shape has changed, it’s a great reason to show it to everyone again. Especially if the dress can be stretched and doesn’t even need to be remade. Geri first appeared in this dress in 2002 at an Oscar party. And 7 years later, she had the same dress that actually looked very different. Her body shape had changed and she had a different hairstyle, so the dress looked completely different, but still impressive.

​What do you do when you have only one jacket, but you want it to look different? You can change your hairstyle and add some new accessories that match the style. Jane Fonda has done this trick several times: in the beginning of 2016, at a party in Beverly Hills and then at the end of the same year when she attended a Saint Laurent show. The actress didn’t wear the same accessories twice — this is worth noting.

When you want to wear the same jacket, you should find different accessories and hairstyles. Even glasses can completely change the way you look. Of course, the jacket will look different with classic pants, a skirt, or jeans.

​Here is another bright example of when a hairstyle solved a problem. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wore this turquoise dress in the evening before the upcoming London Olympic Games in 2012. And she used the same dress at a ceremony for the Tusk Conservation Awards in 2018 but her hair looked completely different this time. She uses this trick regularly. Middleton is famous for being careful with her clothes, so she is great at completely changing the look by tweaking it a little with hairstyles, hats, and other accessories.

​Model Kate Moss doesn’t just love her furs, but she also knows how to wear them properly. In 2010, at a Christian Dior fashion show, she appeared in a black fur coat that was already 4 years old. The first time when paparazzi saw Moss in this coat was in 2006 during a Sam & Ruby charity event.

Learn to give your coats a different look by changing up the clothing underneath it. The contrasting color of a sweater can completely change the overall look.

​It’s not just the ladies that can wear the same item of clothing several times and still amaze everyone. The British singer of the band One Direction, Harry Styles, wore a shirt at his birthday party in 2013. It had a funny print with hearts. Just 6 months later, he chose the same shirt for the premiere of One Direction: This Is Us. The second time, he also wore a jacket on top of it.

Clothing that has a funny print might look great with a very conservative piece, like for example, a suit. Don’t be afraid of adding some joy to your look. But not too much.

​Every time Sharon Stone is on the Red Carpet, it looks like a mini fashion show. The actress always chooses pieces by famous designers to wear in public. Sharon wore this Roberto Cavalli dress twice: in 2009, at a Mardan Palace party in Antalya, Turkey, and one year later at a concert dedicated to the New York City Police Department. Stone used a contrast between dark and light accessories to switch up the look.

​Concrete is the second most consumed product, after water, but it’s not exactly good for the environment. Concrete that is continuously in contact with marine life tends to harm it because of its chemical components. But the company ECOncrete offers a good solution to the problem.

They’ve created some products that are manufactured only partially with concrete that have a different and eco-friendly composition and design. When placed inside oceans, these concrete blocks allow small fish and coral to live inside their small holes, helping to repopulate the ecosystem.

​Saltwater Brewery is a company from Florida owned by ocean lovers who don’t want any of their products to end up contaminating the sea or harming marine animals. They were well aware that many marine species confuse plastic 6-pack rings with food and that they usually end up hurting them.

That’s why they came up with packaging that’s safe for marine animals to eat. This way they work together with their consumers to reduce plastic waste and feed animals, instead of harming them.

​This invention was designed by Anna Du, a 6th grader that became a finalist in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Her robot is a remotely operated vehicle (RAV) that employs infrared light to detect and hunt microplastics.

It’s composed of 2 different systems, a navigation system that guides it through water, and a detection system that uses a high-resolution infrared camera to find the plastic.

The Seabin Project looks almost like a regular trash can and does exactly what a regular trash can does, it collects garbage. However, it does it in the ocean. Designers created it to absorb the pollution left around docks, ports, and marinas. The Seabin sucks in water and, in an inside bag, it catches debris, oil, plastic, fuels, and detergents, releasing clean water afterward.

The bins capture almost 2 tons of garbage per day.

​The SeaVax is a robotic boat that is able to absorb plastic waste from the water. It’s still a prototype, but the future system will be capable of holding up to 150 tons of plastic rubbish. It will run on solar energy and wind turbines, making it an even more perfect environmentally-friendly solution.

​The Great Pacific Garbage Patch that lays between Hawaii and California is so huge, some call it a garbage continent. However, its days are numbered. Boyan Slat, a young Dutch scientist, spent 5 years creating The Ocean Cleanup, a massive system that will clean the oceans.

The system, which is called Wilson, consists of screens that are attached to polyethylene pipes that float while capturing every piece of plastic under the water’s surface. This giant pipe has already started working on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it projects that it will be able to reduce it by 50% in 5 years.

​The Great Barrier Reef, yes, Nemo’s home, is threatened by sun rays that elevate the water temperature. Warmer water increases the ocean’s acidity, which in turn bleaches the corals. But now, scientists from the University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute of Marine Science have developed a biodegradable formula to fight this.

The solution is made from calcium and can be sprayed onto the water creating a film that keeps water cool and minimizes sunlight exposure.

​These cubes are artificial, eco-engineered marine habitats created by a company called ARC Marine. The cubes are made of environmentally friendly materials that mimic the features of a coral reef and provide multiple species of marine animals with food, shelter, better water quality, and more.

They’re introduced inside the ocean and placed in areas where reefs have been damaged, to reconstruct the natural ecosystem.

​Australian scientists are reseeding damaged coral reefs that are located in Philippine waters and on the Great Barrier Reef by using new in vitro fertilization (IVF) methods for corals. Samples of coral larvae are taken from the ocean and reproduced by the millions in laboratories.

They are later placed on damaged reefs and secured by nets to prevent the current from taking them away. This is an innovative way to repopulate the marine area that has been affected by climate change and the El Niño phenomenon, both of which elevate water temperatures.

​Skipping Rocks Lab is a sustainable packaging company that has created Hoola, a packaging product that’s meant to disappear. The packages are made from Notpla, an innovative material created using seaweed and other plants that degrade in water naturally. It can even hold liquids.

​Many people are seriously concerned about the wax that fruits and vegetables are coated with, which helps to prevent their spoilage during transportation and storage. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed that this coating is safe and that there is a reason for it.

Freshly picked fruits and vegetables are coated with wax anyway that is formed in a natural way, and preserves fruits from drying and softening. However, fruits are washed after they have been picked to remove dust and chemicals, so the part of their natural wax gets washed off too. Thus, waxing just restores the loss of the natural wax of fruits.

This wax, by the way, is edible, and only a couple drops of it are used for each fruit. It can’t be digested by the human body and when leaving our system it doesn’t harm our health at all. Of course, you need to wash fruits anyway to remove dirt, bacteria, and part of the wax.

When we hear that gas is used for banana ripening, our imagination can create some scary scenarios. In reality, it’s not that terrible. The point is that bananas are picked when they are still green and they are transported around the world on special reefer ships and only afterward are they placed in special gas rooms for a day.

The ripening gas consists of nitrogen (95%) and ethylene (5%). By the way, nitrogen is a part of the air we breathe, and ethylene is released by apples. You can make an analog of this scenario at home. If you’ve bought green bananas, wet them, put them in a dark plastic bag together with ripe apples and then seal them. A couple of days later, your bananas will be ripe.

Also, some people say that bananas are soaked in formaldehyde at banana plantations. In reality, they are treated with thiabendazole against rot and fungus. The amount of this substance is so small it can’t be toxic to a human. Besides, thiabendazole can be easily removed by cold water, so if you want to make sure this substance doesn’t get into your body, just wash fruits before eating them.

​Many people think that fruits, vegetables, and berries lose most of their vitamins and all of their healthy properties during the process of freezing. But experts from the University of California have proven that this isn’t true.

The scientists studied the concentration of 4 vitamins — С, B2, E, and A in frozen fruit and concluded that it is even higher than in fresh fruits which are kept on a store shelf or at home for some time.

The only fruits which they don’t recommend freezing are tomatoes. Even the chilling of tomatoes to anything below 53°F results in their reduced flavor quality.

​Consumers who don’t buy UHT milk are right about one thing: this method of processing kills almost all vitamins in milk. However, you should remember that milk contains more than just vitamins. It also contains proteins, fats, and carbs, and UHT milk still has them.

In general, the contents of pasteurized milk and UHT milk are identical except for the vitamins. If a person has a well-balanced diet, they get all the necessary vitamins from other foods, while UHT milk couldn’t put your health at risk if it was stored incorrectly.

​Green buckwheat is currently trendy in the food industry and there is a reason for that. Regular (brown) buckwheat is heated during production, so the amount of nutrients in it is lower than in green buckwheat. However, the difference is insignificant.

On top of that, the majority of vitamins and microelements like B vitamins, iodine, iron, potassium, manganese, and phosphorus that buckwheat is so rich with, can’t be destroyed by heating. The majority of these elements remain intact even after cooking. Perhaps, green buckwheat will have more vitamins if it’s cooked by being soaked in cold water, but the difference will still be really small.

​Many fruits and the majority of dried fruits are sulfited, meaning they are treated with sulfur dioxide (this preserving agent is usually called E220 on a product label). This substance helps fruits to keep their natural color and be resistant to blast. People are usually suspicious to such products, and in most cases their concerns are groundless.

If food processing is conducted in line with established requirements, there is nothing bad about it. Sulfur-containing compounds have been used in the food industry for a very long time, and the risks from eating them are no higher than the risks from eating foods affected by putrefying bacteria and vermin.

​Everyone knows that deep fried foods are harmful to your health. But there is one exception. The latest studies published in Food Chemistry magazine showed that some foods can, on the contrary, benefit from this method of cooking.

For example, deep frying vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and pumpkin will increase the phenolics and the antioxidant capacity in them, which reduce the risks of many diseases. The only condition is that you should use extra virgin olive oil.

Long story short, it’s not as scary as we might think. The government regulations in the food industry are usually very strict, so that we are eating and buying the most fresh, delicious, and safe foods. At the same time, some foods even benefit from the processing, like a longer storage time (UHT milk and frozen fruits and vegetables) or a shorter cooking time (brown buckwheat).

In 1873, Frank Woolworth, who had just finished 2 study terms at a business college, started to work as a shop assistant. He was very shy and would stutter, freezing with fear every time customers turned to him. The owner of the shop, Mr. Moore, wanted to turn Frank into a clever businessman and once said that he was going to be absent for the whole day, so, he’d have to leave the young man alone to assume all the duties of a seller. Moreover, Frank was responsible for the store’s daily revenue, otherwise, Mister Moore would fire him.

He started to shiver at the thought that he would have to communicate with customers all day long. That’s when Frank got enlightened with an ingenious idea — he decided to attach a piece of paper with the price to every item so that the visitors of the shop wouldn’t disturb him as much. He spent the entire prior night placing cards with prices on the items, while stale goods received a tag saying, “All for 5 cents.”

Much to his surprise, the buyers liked this idea — there were a lot of shy people among them too. While the stale goods sold out within a couple of hours. Frank managed to earn a 6-day store revenue in just one day. Having come back, the shop owner was shocked and started to use price tags on a regular basis. He also offered Frank the opportunity to open his own store and even lent him $300.

Soon after, Frank opened one “Five-and-Dime” store, later he opened another one — and things were going great. The money started rolling in. Woolworth then came up with an idea to decorate his shops with Christmas decorations so that buyers were in a festive mood while shopping and would spend more money. His idea succeeded again — people liked it, and other shops started to use this idea too.

Over several decades, Woolworth became so rich that he managed to build the world’s highest skyscraper of that time in New-York — a 55-story building called the Woolworth Building. The creator of price tags died in 1919, at the age of 66, from a gallbladder disease.

​Richard Thompson James had been showing off his creative skills since childhood when he would create toys for himself. When he grew up, he got a degree in naval engineering and got a job as an office worker at the “William Cramp & Sons” shipyard in Philadelphia where he would invent equipment for submarines and battleships.

Once on a hot day in 1943, he was developing a system for the suspension and stabilization of sensitive shipboard instruments aboard vessels. Then, one moment, James made a clumsy turn and dropped a box with spare parts off the top shelf. When Richard bent down to collect the scattered parts, he saw a tension spring that was awkwardly “walking” down the table and stacks of books and stopped on the ground.

The “walking” spring impressed the engineer and he repeated the same trick with the spring at home on his own stairs. In the next few months, he studied the elastic coefficients of different types of wire until he found the optimal combination. That’s when the first “walking” spring that could easily go down the stairs was born.

James borrowed $500, opened his own company, and produced first 400 toys packed in ordinary parchment paper. However, toy shop owners were not interested in his ordinary looking spiral bent wire. After much persuasion, James managed to display his Slinky springs in one of the shops. But they would lie untouched on the store shelves for weeks. After some time, the owner decided to grab life by the horns — he went to the shop and started to demonstrate the way his invention worked. As unbelievable as it might sound, he managed to sell all 400 Slinkys within 1.5 hours for $1 each and he sold more than 20,000 toys within the next several weeks. The Slinky spring toy became a national phenomenon.

​James improved the production of springs, speeding it up many times, and sold more than 100 million toys for $1 each over the next 2 years. His company made a huge profit. However, at the same time, the inventor was gradually becoming more and more socially isolated. He wasn’t interested in money anymore. He also stopped taking part in raising his 6 kids and started to cheat on his wife. When she found out, he began to spend more time in the confessional at church. Later it turned out that he was secretly giving almost all of his earned income to evangelical religious groups. Eventually, in February 1960, James left for the wilderness in Bolivia without any explanation, and he joined a sect and severed all ties with the outside world.

Moreover, he left his family and company with million-dollar debts. His wife, Betty, had to choose between closing the company or becoming its leader. She chose the latter, plunged into business, and managed to be even more successful than her husband. By the way, it’s thanks to her that the Toy Story cartoon included the Slinky dog. After the release of the cartoon, the sales of Slinkys doubled. Today the Slinky spring toy is one of the most popular toys in the world.

The owner of Slinky died somewhere in Bolivia in 1974, at the age of 56.

​In the late 1960s, Roy Raymond, a Stanford graduate, decided to buy a present for his wife and went to a shop looking for a set of beautiful lingerie. But all he saw in the shop were terry cloth robes and ugly floral print pajamas, while the shop assistants had been trained to serve only women and were not able to help him select the desired lingerie. The whole experience made him uneasy and he ended up leaving the shop without making a purchase.

After this experience, Roy decided to open his own lingerie shop where male buyers would feel comfortable. Over the next 8 years, Raymond studied the lingerie market and decided to focus on lace products and push-up bras. In 1977, he borrowed $40,000 from his parents and the same amount from other relatives and opened his first shop, called Victoria’s Secret. He earned $500,000 in the first year.

Raymond started to sell products with the help of catalogs and making a real revolution in the approach to lingerie sales. In 1982, his 6 shops brought him $6 million in revenue. Despite these figures, Roy had some financial difficulties and he decided to sell his company to Leslie Wexner, the creator of The Limited retail stores’ chain, for $1 million. Wexner instantly reoriented Victoria’s Secret and focused it on a female audience that could choose affordable luxury lingerie by themselves. It was he who later made this brand one of the leading brands on the market.

In 1984, Raymond founded a kids’ store called, “My Child’s Destiny” that went bankrupt 2 years later. After several more unsuccessful business start-ups, Raymond committed suicide in August 1993 by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

​In 1912, an American man of German origin, Otto Rohwedder, owned 3 jewelry shops. However, it wasn’t gold and diamonds that he was interested in, but the tools and mechanisms that he was constructing in his free time. Once, Rohwedder heard housewives complaining about how much time it takes for them to slice bread, especially in the mornings when they had to cook breakfast for the whole family. Additionally, the process of slicing wasn’t a safe activity. Otto got inspired and he decided to create a machine for bakeries that would slice bread.

He got so inspired by this idea that he decided to sell all his shops in 1916 and started to develop the first prototype of the invention with the money he made. He made hundreds of sketches, made his first machine that would cut bread and put slices together with a metal knitting needle. However, one year later the warehouse that the inventor was working in caught on fire and everything got destroyed — from the prototype to the blueprints.

Otto didn’t give up. In order to continue to feed his family and raise money for further developments, the engineer worked as a securities agent for 10 years. In 1927, he designed the first machine that was technically better than the burned prototype — the new machine not only sliced, but also wrapped bread. However, when it came to selling the device to bakeries, Rohwedder was laughed at because no one believed in his idea for selling sliced bread.

That’s when Otto offered to use his device at his friend’s bakery. This bakery, named the Frank Bench Bakery, was almost bankrupt at that moment. So, since he had nothing to lose, he agreed and the massive machine was installed in his shop.

In the 1920s, the 3M company was producing sandpaper that wasn’t always good quality. At this time, a 22-year-old engineer named Richard Drew had the lowest paid job. His main work was to test various types of grains for sandpaper. 2 years later, Richard got a small promotion — he was now being sent to local car repair shops to sell the products manufactured by the company.

It’s worth noting here — at that time, painting cars 2 different colors was very popular. But for car painting specialists, this process was extremely difficult — they used self-made glues, newspapers, and surgical tape. When removing the surgical tape, it would often pull off the fresh paint and the painting masters had to restart the process all over again. That’s why they needed the sandpaper.

Drew visited one of these car repair shops right at the moment car painting masters were boiling over another unsuccessful paint job. Of course, they reacted to this young fellow without any enthusiasm and refused to listen to him. However, at that moment, Drew had an idea, and he thought that it would be great to invent a sticky tape that wouldn’t leave any visible trace after its removal.

​iRchard didn’t have any knowledge in the field of creating sticky tape at that time. But he started to conduct experiments using vegetable oils, flaxseed, resin, glycerin, and other ingredients. Drew almost stopped working altogether and was almost about to be fired when, finally, after 2 years of trials, he found an ideal formula and created a paper that would easily stick to the surface and unstick without any trace.

Initially, his boss didn’t appreciate the invention. But when the tape gained popularity among auto repair masters, he decided to open a laboratory for experiments. While working there, Drew created a transparent sticky tape made of cellophane in under a year. Years later, this product made the 3M company billions of dollars.

​Is there anything more convenient? You wipe makeup off and forget about it. But you can’t use wipes all the time: they don’t cleanse the skin well enough. More than that, they’re made of a rough material that causes irritation and dries and stretches the skin. You should only use them when you don’t have access to water and a good cleanser. But for everyday care, you should use special foaming cleansers and gels.

​Serums should be applied before using a moisturizing cream. And it’s better to do it in the evening, especially if the serum contains retinol. This will allow the skin to fully absorb the necessary nutrients. A face mask will make it even more effective. In the summer, retinol-rich products can only be used together with sunscreen because they make the skin too sensitive to sunlight which can provoke sunburns.

​Most sponges, especially popular beauty blenders, need to be wet. When they are dry, they “eat” too much of the beauty product and don’t spread it evenly.

​Many of us confuse these 2 beauty products, so let’s make it clear: a concealer should only be used in the area near the eyes, and a corrector is used to hide defects of the skin on the face. There are little nuances you should know when using either of them. When using a concealer, you should moisturize the skin in advance. A corrector should be applied with massaging movements — this way it will look more natural on the face.

​Cleansers are much more useful if they’re not only used for removing makeup in the evening but also in the morning. This way, you can remove the sebum, the dead skin cells, and all the dirt and sweat that are on your skin at night. Also, it’s best if you give up on using scrubs and use cleansers with acids because aggressive cleansing is not necessarily better than no cleanser at all.

​Every type of facial mask should be used according to the directions. Don’t leave the mask on your face overnight unless the manufacturer says so — this can lead to serious skin problems. Fabric face masks should be removed before they dry: if you don’t do this, the mask will start to suck the moisture from the skin which makes the skin drier. The same goes for clay face maks — they should be applied in a thick layer in order for the moisture to evaporate slower. Remove them while they are still sticky.

​Different face lotions have different effects. Of course, their ingredients are different depending on the function of the product. However, most lotions contain alcohol and if you use them often enough, the skin starts to produce even more sebum as a response to aggressive chemicals. Also, lotions should not be applied to the entire face, but instead, specific areas.

​Micellar water is a lot like lotion, the only difference being that it doesn’t contain alcohol. It contains other active ingredients (micelles) and all the dirt they collect will remain on the face unless you wash it with water. Long-term contact of micellar water with the skin will make the water work like soap. This will lead to irritation.