Cat litter, it could be argued, kicked off the pet products industry. After its invention in the 1940s, other inventors started to come up with products that today are standard in the homes of people with pets.

Research:

• Caminiti, Kasey. “Inside the Secret Lives of Pets With Allen Simon.” DuJour. https://dujour.com/life/allen-simon-founder-wee-wee-pad-pet-products/
• “Clays.” U.S. Geological Survey. https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-clays.pdf
• Crow, Frank. L. “Cat Tree.” Nov. 25, 1969. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/65/fa/30/1290601d5476ab/US3479990.pdf
• Edward Lowe Foundation. https://edwardlowe.org/
• Gross, Daniel A. “How Kitty Litter went from happy accident to $2 billion industry.” Washington Post. Feb. 2, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/you-wont-believe-how-old-that-kitty-litter-is/2015/02/02/9ecac9ea-a1b4-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html
• Holding, Ray. “Cassopolis Man Valet for 10,000 Cats.” The Kalamazoo Gazette. Sept. 4, 1955. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1145480706/?match=1&terms=Ed%20Lowe%20Kitty%20Litter
• “Kitty Litter.” (ad) The Ann Arbor News. Feb. 16, 1955. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1178883937/?match=1&terms=Ed%20Lowe%20Kitty%20Litter
• “Kitty Litter Maker Selling Operations.” The New York Times. Sept. 13, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/13/business/company-news-kitty-litter-maker-selling-operations.html
• “New Boon for Cat Owners.” Delaware County Daily Times. Nov. 16, 1949. https://www.newspapers.com/image/53207968/?match=1&terms=Ed%20Lowe%20Kitty%20Litter
• “PetProducts.com | CEO Allen Simon & Kevin Yamano, VP Business Development | Innovators.” LilaMax Media. April 23, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsHhyEcz-pQ
• Simon, Allen. “Allen Simon.” LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-simon-592115111/
• Simon, Allen. “Dog Toy.” U.S. Patent Office. Dec. 16, 2008. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/40/31/65/61af50ca84b654/USD583113.pdf
• Simon, Allen. “Scoop for Cat Littler.” U.S. Patent Office. Jan. 19, 1993. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c2/f4/01/b378f00dd92e8c/USD332675.pdf
• Simon, Allen. “Bristled Grooming Glove.” U.S. Patent Office. Jan. 28, 2014. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b6/83/22/143c9b9392d608/USD698159.pdf
• Thomas, Robert Mcg., Jr. “Edward Lowe Dies at 75; a Hunch Led Him to Create Kitty Litter.” New York Times. Oct. 6, 1995. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/06/us/edward-lowe-dies-at-75-a-hunch-led-him-to-create-kitty-litter.html
• United Press International. “Ed Lowe Owes His Fortune to Kitty Litter.” L.A. Times Archive. June 16, 1985. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-06-16-sp-2907-story.html
• “U.S. pet ownership statistics.” American Veterinary Medical Association. 2024. https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-pet-ownership-statistics

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Ballooning became a huge fad starting in the late 18th century, and there was a surprising amount of rioting associated with it. Fervor, excitement, and intoxication in some instances, meant that balloon events were prone to get out of control.

Research:

• Bond, Elizabeth Andrews. “Popular Science and Public Participation.” From The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France. Cornell University Press. 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv310vktg.8
• Branson, Susan. “Scientific Americans.” Cornell University Press, 2022. Cornell University Press, 2022.
• Coxwell, Henry Tracey. “My Life and Balloon Experiences.” W.H. Allen. 1889. https://archive.org/details/mylifeandballoo02coxwgoog/
• Daily National Intelligencer. “The Balloon, and Conflagration of Vauxhall.” 9/14/1819. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83026172/1819-09-14/ed-1/?sp=2&q=vauxhall&r=0.48,-0.027,0.621,0.225,0
• Franklin, Benjamin. “Benjamin Franklin to Ingenhousz, 16 January 1784.” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0310#BNFN-01-41-02-0310-fn-0005
• “Hot-Air Balloon: Jean-François Janinet (1752–1814).” https://www.getty.edu/publications/artists-things/things/hot-air-balloon/#fnref8
• Gillespie, Richard. “Ballooning in France and Britain, 1783-1786: Aerostation and Adventurism.” Isis, Vol. 75, No. 2 (June, 1984). https://www.jstor.org/stable/231824
• Glaisher, James. “Travels in the Air.” R. Bentley. 1871. https://archive.org/details/ldpd_7245144_000
• Holman, Brett. “The Melbourne balloon riot of 1858.” Airminded. 3/23/2017. https://airminded.org/2017/03/23/the-melbourne-balloon-riot-of-1858/
• Jackson, Joseph. “Vauxhall Garden.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. LVII. No. 4. 1933.
• Keen, Paul. “The ‘Balloonomania’: Science and Spectacle in 1780s England.” Eighteenth-Century Studies , Summer, 2006, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Summer, 2006). https://www.jstor.org/stable/30053707
• Magazine Monitor. “Victorian Strangeness: The great balloon riot of 1864.” BBC. 8/9/2014. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-28674654
• Robbins, John. “Up in the Air: Balloonomania and Scientific Performance.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 48, No. 4, Special Issue: Performance. Summer 2015. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24690309
• Robson, David. “The Victorians who flew as high as jumbo jets.” BBC. 4/20/2016. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160419-the-victorians-who-flew-as-high-as-jets
• Smith, Zoe. “Disaster at 37,000 feet.” University of Cambridge. https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/balloon-disaster
• Soth, Amelia. “Hot Air Balloon Launch Riot!” JSTOR Daily. 2/3/2022. https://daily.jstor.org/hot-air-balloon-launch-riot/
• Sparrow, Jeff. “Wrath and awe: a short history of balloons and their power to fire up mob fury.” The Guardian. 2/14/2023. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/15/wrath-and-awe-a-short-history-of-balloons-and-their-power-to-fire-up-mob-fury
• Sydney Morning Herald. “The Balloon Riot in the Domain: Death of Thomas Downs.” 12/19/1856. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12990254
• Sydney Morning Herald. “The Sydney Balloon.” Trove. 12/16/1856. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12990120
• The Rhode-Island American. “Riotous Proceedigns.” 9/14/1819. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83025442/1819-09-14/ed-1/?sp=3&q=vauxhall&r=-0.14,1.265,0.686,0.248,0
• Tucker, Jennifer. “Voyages of Discovery on Oceans of Air: Scientific Observation and the Image of Science in an Age of ‘Balloonacy.’” Osiris, 1996, Vol. 11, Science in the Field (1996). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/301930
• Wroth, Warwick. “Cremorne and the Later London Gardens.” London. Elliot Stock. 1907.

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This 2018 episode covers the period in the late 1820s when north Georgia became the site of a gold rush that predated the California gold rush by two decades. It's also tied to some of the darkest parts of U.S. history regarding the treatment of Native Americans.

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