This scan from last month’s issue of Paris Match shows that stardom isn’t all foie gras and champagne. Brigitte Bardot is trapped in a huge crowd of fans as a few gendarmes try to clear a path for her. The text at lower right reads: “In 1962 before the camera of Louis Malle, Brigitte Bardot takes her role in the cinema of life—the harassed star.” The photo was made while Bardot was filming A Very Private Affair.
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.