Norweigan Roll

it was his whole country, Norway. The thing is that in the nineteen seventies fishermen in Norway had turned from traditional fishing methods to something new, the fish farm. The newly minted fish farmers had become very good at their jobs, and when they started raising fish in net pen in the sea itself, it took fish farming to a different level, and soon they were harvesting fish like never before. But even as Norwegians were farming more fish, the numbers of

fish they were eating we're going down. Maybe that wouldn't have been Thor's problem, except that in nineteen eighty one he was appointed to a new job with a title, Norwegian Minister of Fisheries. So all of a sudden, all the fish that were being put away in freezer storage were precisely his problem. The freezers were industrial size, but they were getting full. Thor needed to help Norway's fish

farmers figure out a way to sell all that frozen stock. Fortunately, though, Thor remembered an idea that had come to him after he had been elected to Norway's parliament in nineteen seventy three. As a member of the Government Committee on Shipping and Fisheries. Thor had visited another nation to build a relationship with them, Japan, and on that visit he had seen a nation where people ate a lot of fish. He thought that maybe they would be interested in buying fish from Norway. But

for a while that idea swam in circles. That is, until ten years later, with the Norwegian fisheries on the brink of collapse, selling Norway's fish became a bit more pressing, so as the new Minister of Fisheries, Thor pulled together a team and started what they called Project Japan, a mission to sell Norway's fish to restaurants, markets and families

who were serving up fish every day. This might have been a tough sell, because, of course, Japan was also a fishing nation, but Thora's idea came back at just the right time. Japan's population was booming and Japanese fishermen were struggling to keep up because in some places the waters where they fished were going dead, and the U n had just ruled the Japanese fishermen needed to stick closer to home. For a people who had been eating

sushi since the eighth century, this was a disaster. Even before refrigeration, salted fish had been wrapped and fermented rice and preserved as a delicacy. In fact, that's where the name comes from. In English, the Japanese word sushi could translate to it's sour, something like the sushi we know today. Raw Fish wrapped in rice was being served up in the middle of the fift hundreds. With fish getting more scarce, though, there were a lot of people ready to look for

new currents to bring fish to Japanese meals. So when Thor arrived back in Japan in the nineteen eighties, he saw a match made in heaven. Fish went flying from Norway to Japan. Sales doubled and then nearly tripled. It all seemed to be going well but there was one fish that didn't interest Japanese chefs very much. They said it had the wrong color, it had a bad smell. They even said its head had the wrong shape. Sure they would eat it sometimes, but definitely not in sushi,

and it definitely wouldn't be eaten uncooked. And there was a good reason for that too. When it was cought in the waters around Japan, it was usually infected by a parasitic nematode and a sakis, So as far as the Japanese were concerned, it wasn't safe to eat raw. But thor knew that there was one place where they

had been eating it raw safely, the Norwegian embassy. Plus he and his team had lots of this bad fish to sell farmed in the waters around Norway and the North Sea, so they set out on a marketing campaign to convince a whole nation to buy their fish, put it on rice, and eat it raw. The story was loud and proud. The bad fish wasn't bad if it came from Norway. The water of the North Sea was cleaner, the fish were fattier, and there were no parasites to

be found. At first, though Japanese eaters stayed skeptical, and no matter how hard Thor and his team pushed, they just wouldn't buy it. That is until he offered one of Japan's biggest frozen food companies, Nietzsche Ray, five thousand metric tons of the bad fish for almost nothing. They couldn't pass it up, and that was Thor's step one. Step two was to have a celebrity chef start to repeat the company line. The color wasn't wrong, just different.

The texture of the fish was smooth, the fat was tasty, and it didn't hurt that Sushi chefs across the Pacific in Los Angeles were also experiment with the fish that would never be served on a roll at home in Japan. It took time, but eventually it worked. The reputation of the fish with the bad color and the bad smell

turned around. In fact, if you've ever eaten at a sushi restaurant any time in the past twenty years, you might be surprised to learn that the fish listed at the top of the menu is something of a recent innovation, because even in Japan, one of the most popular fish to eat with sushi today is the one that Thor worked the hardest to sell the fatty and delicious Atlantic salmon. Some people are just really good at holding things together.

The Beatles wouldn't have been the Beatles without Ringo keeping steady rhythm on the drums. King Arthur defeated the Saxons and ruled over England with the help of his knights at the round Table. Abraham Lincoln united a country ravaged by war, and it cost him everything. And then there was Harry. Harry's full name was Harry Coover. He didn't play in a rock supergroup or carry a legendary sword, nor did he wear a stovepipe hat. But he did

change the world, and he did it with chemistry. Coover was born in Newark, Delaware, in nineteen seventeen, where he lived until he was a teenager. A passing train hit his car while he was driving and nearly killed him, putting him in a coma for almost two months. After he recovered, his family moved to upstate New York and he was able to finish high school. Coover had a brilliant mind even at a young age, and went on

a major in chemistry at Hobart College. Then he continued on to get his master's degree and then a doctorate in organic chemistry at Cornell. All he really wanted to do was help people. He had written a dissertation on commercial synthesis of vitamin B six research that was commandeered by the U. S. Military. From there, he started working with plastics. Polymers were a far cry from pharmaceuticals, but the American soldiers fighting over season World War Two needed

inexpensive and accurate sites for their guns. Harry believed the plastics were the future for military warfare, and in ninety two he began development on a clear plastic gun site to be affixed to Allied rifles. Among his trials and errors, he tried one formula, which he scrapped. Early on. He'd been working with chemicals known as cianoac relates. However, during his tests he found that they couldn't be molded or shaped easily. The slightest bit of moisture caused them to

polymerize and become quite sticky. Since there was moisture in everything, they could stick to literally anything they touched. Harry didn't think much about the substance and continued with his work, eventually taking his talents to Eastman Kodak in the early nineteen fifties, he didn't work on cameras. Though Harry had been put in charge of a group of scientists who were developing heat resistant polymers to be used in the

canopies of jet airplanes. He thought back to his work on the gun sights and remembered the cianoac relates he'd given up on six years earlier. It seemed like they might work in this instant. He tested his theory by spreading the clear, viscous liquid between two refractometer prisms and pressing them together. There was just one problem. He couldn't

pull him apart, no matter how hard he tried. Harry and his fellow researchers then began testing his cyanoac relate formula all over the lab, applying it to random objects and pushing the limits of its strength. And while they didn't think it would work too well on jet planes, it seemed to have a great future as a commercial product. Harry patented it, while Eastman Kodak boxed and branded it as Eastman number nine ten. They put it on store

shelves shortly after. Over time, it was licensed out to various manufacturers who changed its name to everything from quick Set number four oh four to super bonder. Harry Coover even went on popular game show I've Got a Secret to show it off by lifting the host right off the floor with only one drop. According to one urban legend, it was believed that the World War Two soldiers themselves had stumbled upon the sticky stuff and started using it

to patch themselves up on the battlefield. That story wasn't true, but it did find a use during the Vietnam War as a makeshift bandage until injured soldiers could get to a hospital for stitches. It's also used by hobbyists in assembling model miniatures, and thanks to its water repellent ability, it's a favorite tool among home aquarium enthusiasts. Today. The product is known by two simple words, regardless of who makes it or how it's marketed, superglue and adhesive so

nice it was accidentally invented twice. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore.

Do come, and until next time, stay curious. Yeah,