Today is National Paper Clip Day. 10 things you never knew about paper clips:
According to the Early Office Museum, the first patent for a bent wire paper clip was awarded in the USA to Samuel B. Fay in 1867. His invention was for attaching tickets to fabric, although the patent did mention keeping papers together as an alternative use. It didn’t look much like the paper clips we use today, though.
The most commonly used paper clip design was never actually patented. It was in production in Britain in the early 1870s by "The Gem Manufacturing Company".
This design became so ubiquitous that the Swedish word for any paper clip is "gem".
During the second world war, patriots in Norway would wear paper clips in their lapels as a symbol of resistance to the German occupiers when badges or pins were banned. However, the Germans caught on eventually and made the wearing of paper clips a crime.
The paperclip is widely used as the symbol for an attachment in most email services.
Clippy was an animated paperclip that used to appear in Microsoft Office products to offer help.
The operation to fly German scientists to America after the second world war to ensure that their expertise didn’t fall into the hands of the Soviet Union, was called Operation Paperclip.
The largest paperclip in the world is 9 m 28 cm (30 ft 5 in) high and 2 m 72 cm (8 ft 11 in) wide. It is made of stainless steel and was created by Evgeny Stepovik in Miass, Russia in May 2010.
The longest paperclip chain to be made by an individual is 2,527 m (8,290 ft 8.19 in), by Imran Sharif (Bangladesh), in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 15 February 2019. If you get a few people together it’s possible to make even longer chains. The longest paper clip chain in the world at time of writing was made by sixty 9th Grade students at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville, Utah in 2004, which was 22.17 miles long and used 1,560,377 paper clips.
Kyle Macdonald from Canada managed to swap a red paperclip for a house. He did it by means of a series of trades online in which he swapped items for other items of slightly larger value. He started by swapping a paperclip for a fish-shaped pen and kept going until he got the house.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
Paperback
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