US

RIP Harry Coover: A celebration of Super Glue

Laura Donovan Contributor
Font Size:

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:

Story link: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

Super Glue is also a source of many laughs.

Sticky shoes YouTube post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceZOaP8eTBY

Hoover, 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:

Laura Donovan

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel