The Shocking Truth: Google Started as 'Backrub'!

Before it became Google, the company was called "Backrub." The name came from how the search engine worked. It analyzed the "back links" pointing to a website to figure out how important that site was. Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the project in 1996 while they were PhD students at Stanford. They later changed the name to Google, a play on the word "googol," meaning the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The new name better fit their goal of organizing a massive amount of information on the web. While it may seem like something that has been around forever, butternut squash is a relatively modern vegetable that was developed in the mid-'40s. It was created by Charles Leggett, a plant breeder in Massachusetts, who wanted a squash with a smoother texture and a more consistent, smaller shape. He crossed different squash varieties to make something sweeter and easier to cook than what was commonly available at the time. The result was the tan, bell-shaped squash that's now a staple in grocery stores. It didn’t become widely popular right away, but its long shelf life helped it catch on. Over time, it became a fall favorite in soups, roasts, and casseroles. There had been an attempt to make a sequel to Beetlejuice in the late '80s, after Burton was asked by the studio to create a second movie following the success of the first film. However, the sequel didn't really take off until Winona Ryder got involved years later. In an Esquire UK interview in 2024, Ryder revealed that she and Burton had been tossing around the idea of a Beetlejuice sequel on and off for about 15 years. She said the two would have "very top secret" meet-ups where they would trade ideas about what a follow-up might look like whenever they were both in LA. However, she said that whenever it seemed like the movie would be a go, Burton would end up taking on another project instead. Part of the reason it took so long to finally make the sequel was that both of them were careful not to rush into making it just because fans wanted one — they wanted to be sure it would live up to the original. Rea Ann Silva came up with the idea for Beautyblender while she was working as a makeup artist on the TV show Girlfriends, one of the first series shot in high definition. On that set, the usual sponges didn't blend makeup smoothly enough for HD cameras, so to solve the problem, she began cutting her own into a new shape that gave a more seamless, natural look. Actors on the show quickly noticed how well her custom sponges worked and began taking them for themselves, which showed Silva there was a potential market for them. That insight eventually led her to launch Beautyblender as a company. The egg-shaped sponge she created has become an important, game-changing makeup tool used by professionals and everyday people alike worldwide. He was inspired by Christopher Robin Milne, the son of author A. A. Milne. Milne began writing the stories in the 1920s and used his son and his son's stuffed animals as the foundation for the fictional world. Many of the characters, including Pooh (which was a teddy bear he got on his first birthday that he later renamed Winnie after a bear in the London Zoo), Piglet, and Eeyore, were based on the real toys Christopher Robin owned. Though, according to him, it was actually his mother who provided "most of the material" for his father's books, because she would come play with him in his room and later tell his father about the things he "thought and did." As the books grew famous, the real Christopher Robin (who actually went by the nickname Billy to his family) struggled with the attention and expectations placed on him. As he grew older, he hated his connection to the stories, and it would estrange him from his parents. The boulder-rolling scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is an homage to a very similar thing that happened in the 1954 Scrooge McDuck comic "The Seven Cities of Cibola." In the comic, Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie travel to a lost city, where they find an emerald idol. However, noticing it is booby-trapped, they decide not to take it. What they don't realize is that they have been followed by the Beagle Boys, who decide to steal the idol, which sets off a giant boulder that chases after them. George Lucas — who created Indiana Jones — was a big fan of the Scrooge McDuck comics (which were created by Carl Barks) growing up and told Edward Summer, a writer who put together a book of Barks' Scrooge comics, that the boulder scene in Raiders was a "conscious homage" to "The Seven Cities of Cibola." In a sort of full-circle moment, the Raiders logo would go on to inspire the DuckTales one (which of course is a classic cartoon series about Scrooge McDuck's adventures): In an interview with Thrillist, David Novak, the former Pepsi marketing executive who came up with the idea for it, said that in 1992, sales for classic colas like Coke and Pepsi were leveling off, and clear and caffeine-free sodas were growing in popularity. So he came up with the idea to create a clear and caffeine-free soda that tasted just like Pepsi. Novak then tasked their then–food scientist, Surinder Kumar, with creating it. However, Pepsi never gave Kumar the closely guarded actual recipe for Pepsi, so he had to guess it while substituting ingredients to keep it clear. Novak also told Kumar that the soda would have to go in a clear bottle, which Kumar tried to dissuade him from, as he knew it would make the drink go bad if it was exposed to sunlight. Pepsi released Crystal Pepsi in a few test markets in April 1992, and it created a lot of buzz. However, Novak and Pepsi wanted to launch it nationally at the 1993 Super Bowl, so they rushed to do so. And it did initially do very, very well, with Crystal Pepsi making $474 million in sales by March 1993. But a lot of those sales ended up being more novelty purchases from people wanting to try it but never buying it again (because it didn't taste like Pepsi and didn't taste that good, period); and then, of course, people started to report that it tasted weird (because it had been exposed to sunlight). In 1994, Pepsi ended up discontinuing Crystal Pepsi. In 2001, freelance copywriter Vinnie Chieco found himself inside Apple’s offices, part of a small group asked to name a new kind of product. Before seeing it, the team was told the device would change how people listened to music by letting them carry their entire music library anywhere. At the time, digital music players existed, but they were awkward, confusing, and often poorly designed. Apple's version was different: small, smooth, and easy to control with a scroll wheel that made finding songs fast. When Chieco finally saw the prototype, its clean white look reminded him of the sleek spacecraft imagery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and immediately thought of the line, "Open the pod bay door, Hal!" This sparked the connection of a "pod" being something small that worked as part of a larger system, like a computer. Once they settled on "pod," Apple then just added the "i" prefix to it.