How a Mexican General’s Exile in Staten Island Led to Modern Chewing Gum
How a Mexican General’s Exile in Staten Island Led to Modern Chewing Gum
He captured the Alamo, lost Texas, and helped invent Tutti Frutti.
5f319086eea5f.jpg
Two years before he died senile and broke, the disgraced Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna lived in a modest residence in Staten Island. Known variously as the executioner of hundreds at The Alamo, the man who lost Texas, and “His Most Serene Highness” and “The Eagle,” Santa Anna was missing a leg and had recently been conned out of tens of thousands of pesos. He spent his exile moving among high society, plotting to get rich or return to Mexico, and chewing on something called chicle.
Santa Anna hoped that his supply of chicle, a natural latex harvested from trees in the same fashion as rubber, would make him rich. He’d pitched Thomas Adams, a local inventor, on developing this foreign substance into an inexpensive replacement for rubber. It never worked. But after he left for Mexico for the final time, dumping his chicle on Adams, it became something else: the first modern chewing gum.
5f318ff95dea7.jpg
5f3190389f83b.jpg
gum.gif
200w.gif
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/h...=pocket-newtab
Reply With Quote
