Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So this is short Stuff, the Happy Holiday's edition. That's right, Happy Holidays. This is good. This would fit nicely in our holiday episode. But I like the idea of but shorty as well. Yeah, and we've got to we can't just be like, oh, we'll just talk about pickles a couple of days before Christmas. You don't like pickles of any sort, do you know? It's the vinegar thing. I love cucumbers. You can ruin a good cucumber by soaking it in vinegar. Yeah, I love them. I know I'm a weirdo. People love pickles. Yeah, I'm crazy for him. And also everybody you can save your emails were very well aware of the irony that we I use pickles as an example of something we're not talking about, and then we started talking about pickles. Is that a thing we do? It just happened at the very beast we're talking about snow gloves though, right, yeah, absolutely, Um, snow gloves are really really interesting as far as like the backstory goes, Like I had no idea. I thought it would probably be kind of cool, but it actually kind of knocked my socks off, So hopefully it'll knock everybody else's socks off just in time for them to be put up alongside the fireplace. Wow, look at you. What a great rejoinder, thanks to they use that right. Yeah, okay, alright, so we're gonna go back in time. Let's hop in the old way back machine. It's been a while. Dust that thing off, and let's go back to a time and place where people worked by candle light. And candle light only gives off so much light. Uh. You can try different kinds of wax in the candle. Some of might burn a little bit brighter. I think the bees wax candle is the brightest. But if you are performing surgery, let's say, or if you're a cobbler and you're doing some fine detail work or a tailor or something like that, then you might need more light. Uh. And I'm looking around, it's pretty dark around us. And so someone had the bright idea of putting a glass globe filled with water in front of a candle, and it created a bit of a more intense flashlight effect. Yeah, basically it creates a spotlight and like a good sized one. I saw it's about hand size, which is that's all you need when you're sewing shoe soles, you know. So this, uh, this trick um was what was trying to be recreated when the guy who is credited with inventing snow globes um stumbled upon them. He was a man named Erwin Persey. He was an Austrian and his business was surgical instruments. He made them, and there was a local surgeon and I believe Vienna, who said, hey, these new bulbs from Mr Edison are pretty great, but I need to make them brighter. Can you do anything about that? And so first thing you tried was that old shoemaker's trick and he found it kind of works, but not necessarily. Maybe if I put something in there with him, uh, it will it will work. Um. He tried to think some glitter first and that probably would have worked pretty well, but it sunk too fast. So then he turned to semolina, which is um partially milled wheat that that it comes into form of like kind of tiny white particles. Yeah, you probably have like semolina bread or something like that. Uh. They put it in baby formula back then. But when he put the semolina in the water, it didn't dissolve, and it stayed intact, and it sort of was suspended a little better than that glitter and was white and eventually would trickle down to the bottom, and Petsy went, my goodness, it looks like a little snow inside this globe. I think it might be onto something here. Yeah. So um persy uh is credited pretty much universally as the inventor of the snow globe. What's interesting about it is he most certainly wasn't, in fact, just some thing like twenty year or so years before he Um invented his snow globe, there was one that had been displayed at the Paris Exposition of eighteen seventy eight. Yeah, in the form of a paper weight. Uh, and it had a dude with an umbrella. When he shook that thing up, Uh, it would look like he was walking through a snowstorm. Um. This is not the kind of thing they have in a museum somewhere, but they do have a description h and a report on the exposition, So it definitely happened. First that I don't think anyone ever accused Prettsy of stealing it. I think it's one of those things that was discovered just sort of individually by different people. Yeah, and if he was aware of it, he wasn't inspired by it. Um. What's interesting is it goes even further back than that, all the way back to the sixteenth century. UM there was apparently a German alchemist named Leonard Furnace thur Nicer. Yeah, I'm going with that who made um basically snow globe, but rather than um snow, he filled it with birds, so the birds would just fly around. This is seventy two before. Right. Again, I don't think Pertsy was aware of Leonard Thurnasir and his alchemy work. He just kind of stumbled upon it. But because of that, because of the Paris Exposition, because in America, a guy named Joseph Garaga was given a patent for something kind of like the snow globe. It's a little muddy. The French, I believe, make a claim certainly for the inventors of the snow globe, but everybody says it was really Pertsy who took this idea and ran with it. And he definitely ran with it. All right, it's a good spot for a break. We're gonna go back and tell the rest of his story right after this. Alright, so uh, Prettsy has invented this snow globe files for a pattern, A nine for a quote glass globe with snow effect end quote called the snake Google. Snay is German for snow and Google is like a globe or a ball or an orb. I've seen it. It's like a cannon ball or a sphere, but it's snow globe. Um. It took about five years only before there was a business being run in Vienna name firm Pertsy, and then they later changed the name to the original Vienna schna Google manufactor the original Vienna snow Globe Factory. And they are still making those snow globes. And it's still the family making those snow globes. Yeah. Um Erwin Pertsey, the third who now runs the show in has since the eighties. So cool. Yeah, it is really cool and they're really high end snow globes too. I think several American presidents of UM commissioned snow globes from They take custom orders. So if you have a really cool snow globe idea and a chunk of change, the persis will make you whatever you want. Um, I this I'm not friends with them. I just have heard this before, so I wonder if Erwin the third was in the eighties, was like nine, I'm going to be a uh like in a band, like craft work and they said, you realize you live in a castle. Would you like to see the balance sheet? And maybe I'll stay in the family business. So the first forty years Chuck Um, they weren't really associated with Christmas that came later on. Instead, they were typically religious theme stuff. One of their blockbusters sellers was the um Maria Zell Basilica, which is a church in Austria. It's not in Vienna. I think it's more towards the East um and it's a pretty big, imposing Baroque cathedral. And one of the reasons why they focused so much on this is because it was a um It was sold as a religious offering to pilgrims who would come to this church like they yeah, a religious souvenir. They set up a stall and they would say souvenirs novelties six and people would buy the snowblop and they would leave it as an offering. Yeah, they set up thing between you and the exit, and it thus began the exit through the gift shop, exit the church through the gift shop. But yeah, they took off really in a big way. Um Orson Wells used one very famously in Citizen Kane at the end when that snow globe breaks. Um, I'm curious now if they made the St. Eligia's hospital one. Oh yeah, for the end of saying elsewhere, man, that's a great question. I got to look that up. But Irwin two took over after World War Two and said, you know what, we're doing great with these religious globes, but uh, snow means Christmas. Christmas means snow. Why don't we start putting Santa claus Is in there and Christmas trees and snowmen. And they did, and then it became really heavily associated with Christmas. And they are pumping out with about thirty employees, about two d thousands of these still every year. And they're they're all like made by hand, their hand painted. Um. Again, they're like really well made. UM. Early on, though, um, they became like an American phenomenon, like America said, these are ours, snow gloves are American from now on. By about the mid twentieth century, I believe UM and they actually became like a like a go to souvenir in the post war boom where people started traveling round UM, where they started making you know, better highways and all that, and Americans just started driving around. And one of the reasons why that was UM able to happen was thanks to innovations in plastic. Yeah, uh, you know, plastic changed everything for good and bad. And they found out, you know, they're always looking for the perfect UM particulate. I guess to act as the snow because what you don't want is to shake this thing up. And if you've ever seen it had a cheap snow globe and had plenty of those growing up, trust me, Uh, if you shake that thing up and the snows on the ground in fifteen seconds, you're really not getting that sense of awe and wonder that you're looking for. You wanted to stay uh floating around. And over the years, they experimented with different types of matter to use in there, and I think there's is a there's is a trade secret, right, That's the impression I have, Yes, that they're not letting anyone know, but it's some sort of wax or and or plastic. Okay, and apparently there's are so well made that there's snowfalls can last two minutes after you shake it up two minutes. By halfway through that you'd be like, Okay, enough already, I don't need to be delighted any longer. You know, I'm gonna get one of these. This has inspired me. I'm gonna get a genuine Irwin Austrian snow globe. Well, Irwin was the first name. I guess we're pretty tight. Yeah, I guess, so you're on a first name basis. You call him Pertsy, I'll call him Ernie. The third um so Chuck. I think we've reached the end of this holiday centric short stuff Don't you do well? Jingle bells out of here? Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So this is short Stuff, the Happy Holiday's edition. That's right, Happy Holidays. This is good. This would fit nicely in our holiday episode. But I like the idea of but shorty as well. Yeah, and we've got to we can't just be like, oh, we'll just talk about pickles a couple of days before Christmas. You don't like pickles of any sort, do you know? It's the vinegar thing. I love cucumbers. You can ruin a good cucumber by soaking it in vinegar. Yeah, I love them. I know I'm a weirdo. People love pickles. Yeah, I'm crazy for him. And also everybody you can save your emails were very well aware of the irony that we I use pickles as an example of something we're not talking about, and then we started talking about pickles. Is that a thing we do? It just happened at the very beast we're talking about snow gloves though, right, yeah, absolutely, Um, snow gloves are really really interesting as far as like the backstory goes, Like I had no idea. I thought it would probably be kind of cool, but it actually kind of knocked my socks off, So hopefully it'll knock everybody else's socks off just in time for them to be put up alongside the fireplace. Wow, look at you. What a great rejoinder, thanks to they use that right. Yeah, okay, alright, so we're gonna go back in time. Let's hop in the old way back machine. It's been a while. Dust that thing off, and let's go back to a time and place where people worked by candle light. And candle light only gives off so much light. Uh. You can try different kinds of wax in the candle. Some of might burn a little bit brighter. I think the bees wax candle is the brightest. But if you are performing surgery, let's say, or if you're a cobbler and you're doing some fine detail work or a tailor or something like that, then you might need more light. Uh. And I'm looking around, it's pretty dark around us. And so someone had the bright idea of putting a glass globe filled with water in front of a candle, and it created a bit of a more intense flashlight effect. Yeah, basically it creates a spotlight and like a good sized one. I saw it's about hand size, which is that's all you need when you're sewing shoe soles, you know. So this, uh, this trick um was what was trying to be recreated when the guy who is credited with inventing snow globes um stumbled upon them. He was a man named Erwin Persey. He was an Austrian and his business was surgical instruments. He made them, and there was a local surgeon and I believe Vienna, who said, hey, these new bulbs from Mr Edison are pretty great, but I need to make them brighter. Can you do anything about that? And so first thing you tried was that old shoemaker's trick and he found it kind of works, but not necessarily. Maybe if I put something in there with him, uh, it will it will work. Um. He tried to think some glitter first and that probably would have worked pretty well, but it sunk too fast. So then he turned to semolina, which is um partially milled wheat that that it comes into form of like kind of tiny white particles. Yeah, you probably have like semolina bread or something like that. Uh. They put it in baby formula back then. But when he put the semolina in the water, it didn't dissolve, and it stayed intact, and it sort of was suspended a little better than that glitter and was white and eventually would trickle down to the bottom, and Petsy went, my goodness, it looks like a little snow inside this globe. I think it might be onto something here. Yeah. So um persy uh is credited pretty much universally as the inventor of the snow globe. What's interesting about it is he most certainly wasn't, in fact, just some thing like twenty year or so years before he Um invented his snow globe, there was one that had been displayed at the Paris Exposition of eighteen seventy eight. Yeah, in the form of a paper weight. Uh, and it had a dude with an umbrella. When he shook that thing up, Uh, it would look like he was walking through a snowstorm. Um. This is not the kind of thing they have in a museum somewhere, but they do have a description h and a report on the exposition, So it definitely happened. First that I don't think anyone ever accused Prettsy of stealing it. I think it's one of those things that was discovered just sort of individually by different people. Yeah, and if he was aware of it, he wasn't inspired by it. Um. What's interesting is it goes even further back than that, all the way back to the sixteenth century. UM there was apparently a German alchemist named Leonard Furnace thur Nicer. Yeah, I'm going with that who made um basically snow globe, but rather than um snow, he filled it with birds, so the birds would just fly around. This is seventy two before. Right. Again, I don't think Pertsy was aware of Leonard Thurnasir and his alchemy work. He just kind of stumbled upon it. But because of that, because of the Paris Exposition, because in America, a guy named Joseph Garaga was given a patent for something kind of like the snow globe. It's a little muddy. The French, I believe, make a claim certainly for the inventors of the snow globe, but everybody says it was really Pertsy who took this idea and ran with it. And he definitely ran with it. All right, it's a good spot for a break. We're gonna go back and tell the rest of his story right after this. Alright, so uh, Prettsy has invented this snow globe files for a pattern, A nine for a quote glass globe with snow effect end quote called the snake Google. Snay is German for snow and Google is like a globe or a ball or an orb. I've seen it. It's like a cannon ball or a sphere, but it's snow globe. Um. It took about five years only before there was a business being run in Vienna name firm Pertsy, and then they later changed the name to the original Vienna schna Google manufactor the original Vienna snow Globe Factory. And they are still making those snow globes. And it's still the family making those snow globes. Yeah. Um Erwin Pertsey, the third who now runs the show in has since the eighties. So cool. Yeah, it is really cool and they're really high end snow globes too. I think several American presidents of UM commissioned snow globes from They take custom orders. So if you have a really cool snow globe idea and a chunk of change, the persis will make you whatever you want. Um, I this I'm not friends with them. I just have heard this before, so I wonder if Erwin the third was in the eighties, was like nine, I'm going to be a uh like in a band, like craft work and they said, you realize you live in a castle. Would you like to see the balance sheet? And maybe I'll stay in the family business. So the first forty years Chuck Um, they weren't really associated with Christmas that came later on. Instead, they were typically religious theme stuff. One of their blockbusters sellers was the um Maria Zell Basilica, which is a church in Austria. It's not in Vienna. I think it's more towards the East um and it's a pretty big, imposing Baroque cathedral. And one of the reasons why they focused so much on this is because it was a um It was sold as a religious offering to pilgrims who would come to this church like they yeah, a religious souvenir. They set up a stall and they would say souvenirs novelties six and people would buy the snowblop and they would leave it as an offering. Yeah, they set up thing between you and the exit, and it thus began the exit through the gift shop, exit the church through the gift shop. But yeah, they took off really in a big way. Um Orson Wells used one very famously in Citizen Kane at the end when that snow globe breaks. Um, I'm curious now if they made the St. Eligia's hospital one. Oh yeah, for the end of saying elsewhere, man, that's a great question. I got to look that up. But Irwin two took over after World War Two and said, you know what, we're doing great with these religious globes, but uh, snow means Christmas. Christmas means snow. Why don't we start putting Santa claus Is in there and Christmas trees and snowmen. And they did, and then it became really heavily associated with Christmas. And they are pumping out with about thirty employees, about two d thousands of these still every year. And they're they're all like made by hand, their hand painted. Um. Again, they're like really well made. UM. Early on, though, um, they became like an American phenomenon, like America said, these are ours, snow gloves are American from now on. By about the mid twentieth century, I believe UM and they actually became like a like a go to souvenir in the post war boom where people started traveling round UM, where they started making you know, better highways and all that, and Americans just started driving around. And one of the reasons why that was UM able to happen was thanks to innovations in plastic. Yeah, uh, you know, plastic changed everything for good and bad. And they found out, you know, they're always looking for the perfect UM particulate. I guess to act as the snow because what you don't want is to shake this thing up. And if you've ever seen it had a cheap snow globe and had plenty of those growing up, trust me, Uh, if you shake that thing up and the snows on the ground in fifteen seconds, you're really not getting that sense of awe and wonder that you're looking for. You wanted to stay uh floating around. And over the years, they experimented with different types of matter to use in there, and I think there's is a there's is a trade secret, right, That's the impression I have, Yes, that they're not letting anyone know, but it's some sort of wax or and or plastic. Okay, and apparently there's are so well made that there's snowfalls can last two minutes after you shake it up two minutes. By halfway through that you'd be like, Okay, enough already, I don't need to be delighted any longer. You know, I'm gonna get one of these. This has inspired me. I'm gonna get a genuine Irwin Austrian snow globe. Well, Irwin was the first name. I guess we're pretty tight. Yeah, I guess, so you're on a first name basis. You call him Pertsy, I'll call him Ernie. The third um so Chuck. I think we've reached the end of this holiday centric short stuff Don't you do well? Jingle bells out of here? Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.