This Technicolor lithograph shows Arline Hunter, who was a Playboy centerfold in August 1954 and an actress on television and in movies. Her first brush with show business was in the 1948 erotic reel The Apple-Knockers and the Coke. Yeah. That’s a real title. And a literal one, too—the reel shows a topless Hunter suggestively playing with an apple and drinking a Coke. It’s available for the moment on YouTube as an age restricted upload and you can watch it in all its grainy goodness there, or just get the gist from the photos below. If you think she looks a bit like Marilyn Monroe you aren’t the only one. The resemblance helped propel Hunter to recognition, and in fact her Playboy appearance was what you might call a revisitation of Monroe’s famous centerfold from the previous year, featuring similar poses and a similar red velvet background. The above image comes from Champion Line and dates from 1952.
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.