Silver and Gold Magazine Fall 2019 | Page 8

HOUSEHOLD TIPS + TRICKS It’s all about the elastic band! Try using an elastic band around jar lids for better grip and ease of opening. With a little help from your wine bottle or paper towel holder, elastic bands can hold a phone up so you can read your recipe while cooking. Keeps the phone off the counter too (cleaner). Make beautiful and simple flower pots by covering them with elastic bands and then painting... makes a great gift! Elastic bands make the best bookmarks! They’re also great for keeping both sides of the book open while reading. Use them at the edges of coat hangers for slip-free hanging. 8 Planning a Thanksgiving dinner? Paint any old glasses with enamel paint and rubber band designs to turn them into beautiful flameless candle holders. Rubber has been around for centuries. Aztecs, Olmecs, and Mayans were making rubber thousands of years ago, by mixing a milky-white sap (latex) from the Hevea brasiliensis tree, with juices from the morning glory vines. But it wasn’t until Englishman Thomas Hancock turned this rubber into elastic to create suspenders, gloves, shoes and even waterproof socks. A few years later and while in jail for failure to pay debts, Charles Goodyear (American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer) began to experiment with this same material by adding sulfur, to result in the hard, elastic, non-sticky, Lots more online! www.silvergoldmagazine.ca Perfect for mess-free painting! and strong material we know today. Charles took out patents in the States in 1844, while Hancock had already done so in England in 1843. In the 1850s and after much battle, the courts sided with Hancock and granted him the patent, costing Goodyear a fortune. When Goodyear died in 1860 at age 59, leaving his family with $200,000 debt - or the equivalent of about $5 million dollars today. Goodyear’s company would later be purchased by American businessman and inventor, Frank Seiberling, who would be the first to grow the company into the multi-million business it is today.