January 30, 2023 - National Hot Tea Month | National Bubble Wrap Day

Welcome to January 30th, 2023 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate tea tales and what to do when your dream pops. The English love tea. In fact they built a global trade empire around it. But the beverage was actually introduced to the country by someone from Portugal. Tea had already been brought to Europe from China, but the Brits didn’t really care for it—they were using it as medicine. Then Catherine of Braganza of Portugal married England’s Charles II and moved to the British Isles. She drank tea every day, something that soon caught on with the rest of the nobility. Word spread about the queen’s habits and soon drinking tea became all the rage with the people of England. How is that for an influencer?! January is National Hot Tea Month, a great time to warm up with a delicious hot cuppa. In 1957 Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes had a bright idea: three dimensional wallpaper. Thinking they could market this to the Beat generation, they took a stab at laminating two plastic shower curtains together. The results, however, popped their dream, as the sheets bubbled up too much. Alfred’s five year old son squeezed them in his hands but it would be years before that trend took off. They next dreamed of using it for greenhouse insulation, but the light bulb really went off when they turned it into a packaging material. The new strategy paid off big time when IBM became their first client, buying bubble wrap to ship their latest computer. The fact that it’s fun to pop wasn’t lost on anyone and to this day people celebrate National Bubble Wrap Day with this dual purpose invention. I’m Anna Devere and I’m Marlo Anderson. Thanks for joining us as we Celebrate Every Day! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices