Harry Coover died more than a week ago, but we’re still glued to this story because the 94-year-old man stuck it out until the end.
Coover, the inventor of Super Glue and Krazy Glazy, passed away in his Kingsport, Tenn., home on March 26. The chemist reportedly discovered his invention by accident in 1942, when he was tasked with designing a plastic rifle sight for the war. One of the compounds he tested was durable but stuck to everything.
“The damn problem was everything was sticking to everything else,” Coover told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2005. “We had a hard time using it in molds.”
And so, Super Glue squirted into existence.
In addition to celebrating Coover’s life, The Daily Caller has interspersed humorous Super Glue videos and ads into our post as a way to commemorate his accomplishments.
Super Glue soccer commercial:
Coover publicly introduced his innovative glue in 1958 during an airing of the game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” hosted by Garry Moore.
Serving a myriad of purposes, Super Glue could be both an arts and crafts luxury and battlefield ailment, but Coover was most proud of what it could do for military members. Many combat medics had a spray version of Coover’s glue because it could be used to help treat bloody wounds.
“There are lots of soldiers who would have bled to death,” Dr. Coover told Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal in 2004. “It saved a lot of lives.”
Unfortunately, Super Glue can be damaging to health of others, such as the woman below who thought it was meant for her eyes:
Super Glue is also a source of many laughs.
Sticky shoes YouTube post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceZOaP8eTBYHoover, a Cornell University science man, received many accolades during his time on earth. Last year, President Barack Obama gave him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Coover had hundreds of patents, and many of them were for variations of his glue.
Since the product’s creation, Super Glue users have been getting themselves into all sorts of sticky situations. In 1996, six firefighters, two doctors and two police officers reportedly spent five hours ripping Gary Foxley off a McDonald’s toilet seat, which had been covered in Super Glue. The 1996 children’s film “Matilda” includes a humorous scene of the main character putting “Super Super Glue” on her mean father’s hat so he won’t be able to yank the fabric from his head. A few days after Coover’s death, TheHairPin blogged that a distressed man had Super Glued a miniature sequined Fedora hat to the side of his head.
Fedoras and Super Glue don’t work well together:
Man gives tutorial on how to Super Glue one’s rear end to the roof: