Doris Houck clowns around with an actor in a gorilla suit in this photo shot by Joseph Jasgur during the mid-1940s. Houck was an actress who appeared in about twenty-five films, many of the roles uncredited, but who also starred in several well-remembered Three Stooges shorts. This whole ape thing, though, she probably always tried to forget.
1937—Carothers Patents Nylon
Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.