A more reliable version of the story is that he was a workaholic who did not want to leave his desk. There is an urban myth that the 4th Earl of Sandwich was a compulsive gambler who could not bear to break off his addiction long enough to eat so had his servants bring him a slice of meat between two slices of bread. The man whose name is probably used unknowingly more often than anyone else's was the First Lord of the Admiralty in the latter half of the 18th century who sponsored Captain Cook's sea voyages. Most refer to long-dead and often obscure Europeans whose names we casually repeat without being aware that they existed. And there was a New Hampshire tree surgeon named Earl Silas Tupper who designed an airtight plastic container.īut enough of Americans. There were seven brothers named Jacuzzi who emigrated from Italy to California, one of whom had a grandson named Roy who marketed an electrically operated bubble bath.
There was also a Texas rancher named Samuel Augustus Maverick whose practice of allowing his cattle to wander the range unbranded was considered rather odd.