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in a year, he had the answer. In 1928, the first workable batch of bubble gum was mixed up in the company mixing machines. “The machines started groaning, the mix started popping, and then I realized I’d forgotten to put any coloring in the gum,” Diemer recalled.
    Serendipity: The next day, he made a second batch. This time he remembered to color it. But the only color he could find was pink. “Pink was all I had at hand,” he says. “And that’s the reason ever since, all over the world, that bubble gum has been predominantly pink.”
    ...THAT WE PLAY BASKETBALL INSTEAD OF BOXBALL
    Background: When James Naismith invented his game in 1891, he decided to put a horizontal “goal” high over players’ heads. He figured that would be safer—there would be no violent pushing and shoving as people tried to block the goal...and shots would be lobbed, not rocketed, at it.
    Serendipity: As one historian writes: “The goal was supposed to be a box. Naismith asked the janitor for a couple of suitable boxes, and the janitor said he didn’t have any...but he did have a couple of round peach baskets in the storeroom. So it was baskets that were tacked to the walls of the gym.” A week later one of the players suggested, “Why not call it basketball?” The inventor answered: “We have a basket and a ball...that would be a good name for it.”
    ...THAT MEL GIBSON GOT HIS BIG BREAK
    Background: According to The Good Luck Book , “When director George Miller was looking for someone to play the male lead for his 1979 post-apocalyptic road movie Mad Max , he was specifically looking for someone who looked weary, beaten-up, and scarred.
    Serendipity: “One of the many ‘wannabes’ who answered the cattle call for the part was a then-unknown Australian actor named Mel Gibson. It just so happened that the night before his scheduled screen test, Gibson was attacked and badly beaten up by three drunks. When he showed up for the audition the next morning looking like a prize fighter on a losing streak, Miller gave him the part. It launched Gibson’s career as an international movie star in such films as The Year of Living Dangerously, Lethal Weapon , and the 1995 Oscar-winning Braveheart .”
    ...THAT YELLOW PAGES ARE YELLOW
    Background: The phone was invented in 1876, and the first Bell business directory came out in 1878. As we wrote in our Ultimate Bathroom Reader , it was printed on white paper. So were subsequent editions all over the country.
    Serendipity: In 1881, the Wyoming Telephone and Telegraph Company hired a printer in Cheyenne to print its first business directory. He didn’t have enough white paper to finish the job and didn’t want to lose the company’s business. So he used the stock he had on hand—yellow paper. Other companies around the country adopted it, too...not realizing it was an accident.
    ...THAT HOLLYWOOD STARS PUT THEIR PRINTS IN CEMENT AT GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATER
    Background: In the early days of Hollywood, Sid Grauman’s movie theater, fashioned after a Chinese pagoda, was the biggest and fanciest of its kind.
    Serendipity: One day in 1927, movie star Norma Shearer accidentally stepped in wet cement as she walked in the courtyard of the theater. Rather than fill the prints in, Graumann got other stars to put their hand- and footprints in the cement. That turned it into one of Hollywood’s biggest tourist attractions.
     
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    Yum! You swallow and recycle about a quart of mucous a day.
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FOUNDING FATHERS
    Some people have achieved immortality because their names became identified with products. You already know the names—now here are the people.
    J AMES DRUMMOND DOLE. In 1899, his cousin, the governor of Hawaii, helped him get some land to pursue his dream of growing pineapples for export. He revolutionized the fruit industry by packing the highly perishable pineapple in cans, shoving pieces through a small slit in the top and sealing it with a bead of solder.
    FRANK GERBER. In