On April 14, 1896, , John Harvey Kellogg received a patent for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.
This idea for corn flakes began by accident when Kellogg and his younger brother, Will Keith Kellogg, left some cooked wheat to sit while they attended to some pressing matters at the sanitarium. When they returned, they found that the wheat had gone stale, but being on a strict budget, so they decided to continue to process it by forcing it through rollers, hoping to obtain long sheets of the dough. To their surprise, what they found instead were flakes, which they toasted and served to their patients. This event occurred on August 8, 1894, and a patent for “Flaked Cereals and Process of Preparing Same” was filed on May 31, 1895, and issued on April 14, 1896
When eating your breakfast cereal of corn flakes or granola, have you ever wondered who came up with the idea of manufacturing these foods? It might surprise you to know that they were invented by a 19th century physician and surgeon who was devoted to healthy living and the use of natural remedies.
John Harvey Kellogg Photo, Around 1913
John Harvey Kellogg grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan, the son of a family of small shopkeepers and devoted Seventh-Day Adventists. As a youth, he worked with James White, the principle founder of the church, to publish the Health Reformer, a monthly publication for Adventists. Many of the articles in the publication were on health and hygiene and advocated temperance, vegetarianism, and the use of natural remedies. In 1872 the Church sent him to study at the Hygieo-Therapeutic College in New Jersey. After 5 months, Kellogg enrolled at the University of Michigan Medical School and then at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City. He received an MD in 1875 and later studied surgery in London and Vienna, qualified as a surgeon, and performed 22,000 operations during his career, which lasted until he was 88.
Kellogg became editor of Health Reformer in 1874, changing its name to Good Health in 1879, and serving as editor of the journal until his death in 1943. He also published 50 books on various aspects of healthy living and advocating vegetarianism; regular exercise; plenty of fresh air and sunshine; drinking 8 to 10 glasses of water a day; and abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee.
Battle Creek Sanitarium
In 1876 Dr. Kellogg became the superintendent of Western Health Reform Institute, a small medical institution of 20 patients run by the Adventists. By 1900, it had been renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and was a health spa that promoted a vegetarian diet and forbid its guests from drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. By 1920 it had expanded to 1200 patients, some of them prominent industrialists and politicians. Kellogg invented a range of exercise equipment for his patients and sought to improve the patients’ diet. He developed and patented a variety of new foods including Granola and Corn Flakes, peanut butter, soy milk, and imitation meats.
Granola
While a medical student in New York City in 1874-75, Kellogg became convinced there existed a widespread need for ready-cooked foods, at least ready-to-eat cereals. At the Sanitarium, he applied this idea in the production of Granola, which consisted of a mixture of oatmeal, corn meal and wheat meal made into cakes with water and exposed to a temperature sufficient to dextrinize the starch to make it more readily digestible. The product was ground to give it a granular form convenient to eat with milk, cream, or fruit juices. This product became the forerunner of several other similar products similarly dextrinizining the starch content of cereals. This was considered important as certain forms of indigestion were relieved by the use of dextrinized foods, although the reason then was not wholly clear. After trying granola at the sanitarium, many guests wanted to eat the cereal at home, so Kellogg established the Sanitas Food Company to make and sell the product. Dr. Kellogg had help running Sanitas from his younger brother Will Keith (W. K.) Kellogg.
Corn Flakes
Dr. Kellogg also became convinced that indigestion and decay of the teeth were encouraged to a marked degree by failure to use the teeth sufficiently in the thorough mastication of food. Accordingly, he made it a practice to require his patients to begin each meal by chewing slowly a small slice of dry zwieback. One day a patient came into the office complaining the zwieback had broken her teeth, making it apparent that zwieback as a dry food was impractical in several classes of patients – those with artificial teeth, with sore teeth or diseased gums, or without teeth. They needed something they could chew without running the risk of injury to their teeth or other inconvenience. Kellogg experimented with producing toasted or dextrinized cereals in a form which, while dry and crisp, could be properly offered to such persons without the addition of milk or cream, which would destroy the value of the dry food’s capability to stimulate an abundant flow of saliva. After some months, he developed the process for making toasted cereal flakes, which became widely used in the manufacture of toasted corn flakes, toasted rice flakes, wheat flakes, etc. Wheat flakes were produced first, quickly followed by toasted rice flakes and other cereal flakes.
Early Kellogg’s Corn Flakes Advertisement, 1910
Creation of W. K. Kellogg Company
By 1905, the Sanitas company was also selling corn flakes, producing 150 cases a day. Sanitas had more than forty competitors by then, as other cereal companies sprang up in Battle Creek. One of Dr. Kellogg’s patients at the Sanitarium was C. W. Post, who later started his own cereal company. Kellogg claimed that Post stole his formula for the corn flakes. Kellogg’s brother wanted to expand the business even more, but Dr. Kellogg disagreed and also disagreed about adding sugar to the cereals. They ended up starting two different companies when Will left the Sanitarium and started the W. K. Kellogg Company in 1906. With a commitment to advertise heavily, Kellogg first sold his flakes under the Sanitas name. On the box was the slogan “The original bears this signature,” followed by “W. K. Kellogg” in Kellogg’s handwriting. Within a year, Kellogg’s name replaced Sanitas on the box, and sales were climbing. Kellogg’s success caught his brother’s attention. In 1908, Dr. Kellogg changed the name of his own food company to the Kellogg Food Company and began selling corn flakes overseas in packages similar to those his brother used. Business dealing between the two brothers, based on W. K. Kellogg’s ties to Sanitas, also strained their relationship. In 1910, Kellogg sued his older brother; the court case dragged on for years. In the end, Kellogg won his suit, although he and Dr. Kellogg rarely spoke again for the rest of their lives. Some of the profits of the W. K. Kellogg company flowed into the Race Betterment Foundation, created in 1914 to publicize and promote eugenics, then later into the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
Sources:
“Harvey Kellogg, MD – Health Reformer and Antismoking Crusader,” Am. J. Public Health: 92(6): 935, June 2002.
“Kellogg Company,” Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed., Reference for Business. http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/businesses/G-L/Kellogg-Company.html. Accessed 5/19/2014.
“W. K. Kellogg,” Reference for Business – Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed. http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/businesses/G-L/Kellogg-W-K.html. Accessed 5/19/2014.
“Breakfast Cereals,” in Cereals section. John Harvey Kellogg. The New Dietetics: What to Eat and How. Battle Creek, Michigan, The Modern Medicine Publishing Co., 1921, pp. 256-258
“John Harvey Kellogg,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg , accessed 5/19/2014.
Sources :
Grand Rapids tobacconists report that conservatively, 40,000 cigars are smoked in Grand Rapids every day. Tobacco smokers spend nearly $2000 for cigars, and this figure does not include those who smoke cigarettes, pipes, and chewing tobacco.
For the full article, see “40,000 Cigars Smoked Daily in Grand Rapids”, Grand Rapids Herald, April 14, 1907.
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| April 14-15, 1912 : Sinking of the Titanic | |
Nugget #1: During her maiden voyage, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The ship could have survived four flooded compartments – the iceberg ripped five. With links to eyewitness testimony, pictures (including the actual iceberg involved in the disaster) and many more primary sources, help your students understand what happened on April 14/15 (in 1912). Source: Carole D. Bos, Fatal Voyage : The Titanic courtesy of Awesome Stories.
Nugget #2: Within hours of the sinking of RMS Titanic on the night of April 14/15, 1912, the story of the ship, its victims and the disasters survivors was being written about. Since then, there has been a deluge of material on the tragedy, including numerous films and radio and television programmes. Today, a search on the internet brings up more than 1.5 million Titanic items. A subject search of the MSU Main Library catalog brings up 78.
Nugget #3: Culled from the national archives of England and the United States, these records provide a unique view of the tragedy, with documents ranging from the chilling SOS messages sent by the crippled ship to a detailed inventory of items lost by one wealthy passenger. In most cases, these papers surfaced during government inquiries launched in both countries following the ships sinking. Courtesy of The Titanic Files from the Smoking Gun.
Nugget #4: When the luxury liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, with more than 1,500 lives lost, the world was stunned! How could such a disaster happen in the modern era of unsinkable ships? To answer that perplexing question, Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan chaired Senate hearings held within days of the disaster. Senators and spectators heard dramatic testimony from the surviving passengers and crew. Smiths subcommittee issued a report on May 28th that led to significant reforms in international maritime safety. Source: U.S. Senate Art and History Page : Senate Committee Investigates the Titanic Disaster.
Nugget #5: Out of the 63 who boarded the Titanic on their way to Michigan, 36 died; 27 survived. Source : Holly Fournier, “A Titanic piece of family history; Troy woman recalls grandmother’s stories of the cold night and lifeboat drama”, Detroit News, April 13, 2012.
For more information, visit Titanic 100 Years : 1912-2012, courtesy of the Detroit Area Library Network.
More interesting trivia and stories from Titanic Universe
Titanic entry from History.com
“Titanic” Disaster [electronic resource] : hearings before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Sixty-Second Congress, second session, on Apr. 19, 20, 22-27, 29, 30, May 1-4, 9, 16, 18, 25, 1912. United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce.
Washington : [s.n.], 1912.
On April 14, 1917, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee walked out of the Senate as opposed to holding a committee meeting that surely would have resulted in a vote on legislation to institute the death penalty in Michigan for first degree murder.
Chair George Condon of Detroit, joined by Sen. Cass Jankowski of Detroit, “slid out” of the Senate chambers at noon. The House had passed the bill, 61-35, and a majority of Senators signed a petition claiming they wanted to vote on it, too. Jankowski said he wanted to interview murderers at Jackson prison before he made up his mind on whether to legalize capital punishment in Michigan.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Motown Record Corp. was incorporated on April 14, 1960.
Berry Gordy Jr. had founded Tamla Records on Jan. 12, 1959, when he got an $800 family loan. The name came from a Debbie Reynolds movie he liked, “Tammy and the Bachelor,” according to Coraleen Rawls of the Motown Museum. Motown was a combination of Motor and Town.
Records were made in a studio in a house on West Grand Boulevard called Hitsville U.S.A. Today, it’s home to the Motown Museum.
In 1972, Gordy moved the record company to Los Angeles.
Among Motown’s biggest stars are Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, the Supremes, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and the Four Tops.
For the full article, see Zlati Meyer, “This week in Michigan history: Motown Records spins to life”, Detroit Free Press, April 13, 2014.
On April 14, 1977, Detroit’s Renaissance Center opened for the first time.
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GM Renaissance Center
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The Renaissance Center was intended by Henry Ford II to symbolize a resurgent Detroit. The focal point of the Renaissance Center is the 725 foot Westin Hotel Tower, a round 73-story tower that is sheathed by glass. Surrounding the Westin are four 39-story (479 feet) office towers that each contain over 500,000 square feet of rentable office space and are sheathed in similar bronze-tinted glass. Unlike the hotel, which is supported by poured concrete, the office towers are supported by structural steel.
Source : Michigan Historical Calendar, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
The Free Press and the Detroit News announced their joint-operating agreement on April 14, 1986.
The deal, which required federal approval, took effect about three and half years later on Nov. 27, 1989, after it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At that time, the Free Press was owned by Knight Ridder and the News was owned by Gannett. Today, Gannett owns the Free Press, and MediaNews Group owns the News.
Source : Zlati Meyer, This Week In Michigan History, Detroit Free Press, April 14, 2013.
The Miracles were Motown’s sparkplug. They were there first, long before acts such as the Supremes, the Four Tops and the Temptations would glide on greater glory into the pop music annals.
In the beginning, the Miracles were a group and William “Smokey” Robinson was the lead singer. The name remained unchanged until 1967, when they became Smokey Robinson and the Miracles – a recognition of Robinson’s indisputable role as frontman, songwriter and guiding light. However, every member of the Miracles was talented, and their satiny harmonies, sharp choreography and other contributions were important to the group’s success.
The Miracles were one of Motown’s most gifted ensembles and among its most long-lived, dating back to their roots as a group at Detroit’s Northern High School. Robinson, Pete Moore and Bobby Rogers actually first sang together in their preteen years. In 1955, Robinson formed the Five Chimes, which consisted of Robinson and Moore, along with high-school classmates James Grice, Clarence Dawson and Donald Wicker. Ronnie White replaced Wicker, Emerson “Sonny” Rogers replaced Dawson, Bobby Rogers replaced Grice, and the group then became the Matadors.
When Sonny Rogers quit to joined the army, Robinson asked Rogers’ sister, Claudette – a member of the Matadorettes, their sister band – to join. The lineup was now set. However, because they now had a female member, the name Matadors was no longer appropriate, so they rechristened themselves the Miracles.
Barry Gordy Jr.’s Introductory Speech about the Miracles at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Miracles Inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Website.
For the full article, see Brian McCollum, “Rock hall of fame induction comes late for the Miracles”, Detroit Free Press, April 14, 2012.
For another, see Brian McCollom, “Rare reunion for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles is a chance to recall glory days”, originally published Feb. 27, 1997, Detroit Free Press, April 14, 2012.
Fifty-four years after its humble beginning on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, that legacy will get bathed in Broadway’s bright lights as “Motown: The Musical” has its official premier today in New York.
The show’s arrival culminates a long labor of love by Barry Gordy, the Motown founder, who conceived the idea a decade ago and enlisted showbiz heavyweights Doug Morris (Sony Music) and Kevin McCollum (“Rent”) as coproducers in 2010.
Gordy, who wrote the initial script and has been hands-on throughout the process, said the show could become his greatest career accomplishment.
Source : Brian McCollom, “‘Motown: The Musical’: Get ready ’cause here it comes”, Detroit Free Press, March 10, 2013.
Brian McCollum, “Diana Ross, Berry Gordy among stars at ‘Motown: The Musical’ opening”, Detroit Free Press, April 14, 2013.
“Through the Banks of the Red Cedar”, a documentary directed by Maya Washington on how Michigan State’s recruitment of African-American football players from a segregated South forged championship football teams during the mid-1960s in East Lansing, debuts at the Detroit Film Festival.
When he walked through the door, the front door mind you, of the Kellogg Center that day in 1963 and was told he would have lunch, the thought was as alien to Gene Washington as the next hour’s experience.
He could sit at a table at a public eatery? A white waitress would ask him for his order? There would be no obstruction, no caustic words, no sneers, no expulsion?
A teenager from Texas had no concept of such a moment or day. But here was a new reality, at Michigan State University, where a young man who lived 15 minutes outside of Houston came to realize not all of America was as racially poisoned as the South.
“You have to look at it from a personal standpoint,” Washington was saying this week during a phone chat. “Everything was very new. We had, in Texas, no relationship with white people. All of a sudden you leave an all-black situation for a completely white scene, and yet everybody was very embracing — as if what we were experiencing down south wasn’t that way at Michigan State.”
Washington, an All-American receiver for the Spartans who was part of MSU’s national championship teams in 1965 and 1966, is now in College Football’s Hall of Fame, as are three other members of those sacred Spartans teams coached, and recruited, by Duffy Daugherty: Bubba Smith, George Webster and Clint Jones.
All arrived at East Lansing when colleges in the south, even in the 1960s, barred African-American players from suiting up for football. If the university hierarchy could get away with it, there was little hope of even enrolling in college, as those with memories of Alabama governor George Wallace, or Mississippi’s Ross Barnett, and their segregated stances recall all too chillingly.
Michigan State’s dividend from admitting black players was, morally speaking, incalculable, while athletically quantifiable: back-to-back championships, and only one loss during those 1965-66 seasons: 14-12, to UCLA, in the Jan. 1, 1966, Rose Bowl.
The tale of how a racially-integrated MSU brought opportunity to athletes, and championships to East Lansing, has been turned into a beautifully woven documentary, “Through The Banks of The Red Cedar,” which as part of its premiere has showings Saturday (1:30 p.m.) at the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Detroit Film Theatre, and Sunday (1 p.m.) at Emagine Theater in Royal Oak, all as part of the Freep Film Festival.
The film is written and produced by Maya Washington, Gene’s youngest daughter, herself an accomplished actor, playwright, poet and arts educator who has released two earlier films. She holds a degree in theater from Southern Cal, a master in fine arts from Hamline University, and an experience in East Lansing in 2011 that spurred her to bring the story of MSU football and integration to a documentary audience.
“It was about then that I first started hearing about Duffy Daugherty’s (recruiting) pipeline,” Maya Washington said this week during an interview from Los Angeles, where she was on assignment, away from her hometown of Minneapolis. . “And then Bubba passed away that year, the same year my dad was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and I was around my dad and his teammates a lot during that particular chapter in time.
“I’d hear and read about some of the stories. And I was fascinated, all because it was such an important part of my own history, and the opportunities I have today.”
Maya Washington decided this tale of prejudice and progress, of two Americas then functioning side by side, would become a documentary movie. With the help of grants, her own funds, and those of supporters, “Through The Banks of the Red Cedar” is now showing.
“I clearly underestimated how long it would take,” she said. “And how much money would be required.”
It has already been presented to audiences at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and the College of St. Scholastica, in Duluth, but Washington says she considers the Detroit-Royal Oak screenings to be the film’s true premiere — and perhaps another experience in the surprise those Minnesota audiences displayed as the story unfurled.
“They did not know schools in the South then were closed to African-Americans and African-American athletes,” Washington said. “Somehow that detail, which provided so much historical context, had been missed.”
Her dad, of course, can attest. He lived the searing experience of a segregated America and a more tolerant, even hospitable, culture at a land-grant college in Michigan.
Washington’s pass-catching skills meshed with those of so many stars at MSU who hailed from states beneath the Mason-Dixon line and who otherwise had no recourse but to play at all-black schools. Instead, they found in East Lansing a campus that embodied a 1960s appetite for social justice, as well as a coach, Daugherty, who was not a taskmaster but rather a man whose personality and football acumen in ’65 and ’66 would meld and shape one of college football’s all-time grandest powers.
Washington, like Webster, Smith, and Jones, became a first-round draft pick in 1967. Four of the first eight NFL picks in that ’67 draft were Spartans. Each of them, almost certainly, would have played somewhere closer to home, somewhere in the South, had white supremacy not then been the policy in Jim Crow America.
Washington’s voice was soft, almost pastoral, as he spoke this week from Minneapolis, where he has lived since the Vikings drafted him 51 years ago. He returned to the memory of that day at Kellogg Center. It was as if a curtain had parted and a different America existed.
“It was so easy to make that adjustment then,” he said, explaining how freedom can overcome unease. “No one would question me about going in the front door of a restaurant. That lunch was my first restaurant situation.”
Telling words, his reference to a “first restaurant situation.” It wasn’t because of poverty Washington hadn’t had a “restaurant situation,” in La Porte, Texas. He had parents who worked. Rather, the idea of a public restaurant — open to all races — was a ridiculous fantasy in the years before the Civil Rights Act became law in 1964.
The men who can most concisely be credited for making MSU a refuge from the South’s racial evil were, in order, MSU president John Hannah, who would go on to become first chairman of the United States Civil Rights Commission, as well as Daugherty, as much a true egalitarian as football coach.
“The one thing I’ll always remember, especially coming from a segregated situation,” Gene Washington said, “is Duffy telling the whole team: ‘Call me Duffy. Don’t call me coach. I’m Duffy.’
“Well, coming from where I did and where it better be ‘mister’ and ‘sir’ and all that stuff, here’s a white guy saying he wants you to call him Duffy. But he did this with all of us as teammates. And in all the time I was there, we were a family. No fights. No differences.”
Maya Washington says it was this humanity, these connecting threads from re-tracing her father’s path from La Porte to East Lansing, and seeing its legacy a half-century later in MSU coach Mark Dantonio’s teams, that became for her a mandate to make the documentary.
Source: Lynn Henning, “Film recalls groundbreaking recruiting at Michigan State”, Detroit News, April 12, 2018; updated April 14, 2018