Above: the interesting parts of an issue of Male, published this month in 1967, with a cover by Mort Kunstler, and inside art by him, Gil Cohen, Bruce Minney, and Earl Norem. The magazine launched in 1950, and though nobody knew it at the time, by 1967 the days of painted covers were numbered. By the early seventies photo covers would be routine, and in another few years the interior photo content of the magazine would shift away from cheesecake and toward pure erotica. Next stop: dissolution. But we’ll have more from Male later.
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.