It happened over 300 years in Holland

READING


Levis Strauss
In 1850,during the Gold Rush,a twenty-year-old immigrant from Bavaria named Levi Strauss stepped off the boat in San Francisco.He had with him a special cloth called Serge de Nimes which was later called denim in America.Levi Strauss hoped to sell the denim as material to make tents and covers for wagons to the men who were going tothe goldfields to look for gold.”You should have brought pants to sell.In the goldfields we need strong pants that dont wear out” one young miner advised Strauss.So Levi Strauss took some of his denim to the nearest tailor and him make the miner a pair of pants.The miner was so pleased with his pants that he told other miners about the wonderfull new Levi’s pants or Levis,and soon Levi Strauss had to open a shop,manufacturing enough trousers for the miners.The miners wanted trousers that were comfortable to ride in,that were low cut so they could bend over easily to pick up the gold from under their feet,and which had big useful pockets.One miner complained that the gold in his pockets kept tearing them.So Levi put a metal corners in the pockets to maket hem stronger.Very soon,miners and cowboys from all over came to get fitted up with Levi’s pants.Today,more than a hundred years later.Levi’s pants walk
he world as Levi’s blue jeans
Levis Strauss
In 1850 twenty-year-old boy from Bavaria arrived San Francisco. His name was Levi Strauss. He had a special cloth with him which was later called denim in America. Levi Strauss hoped to sell the denim to make tents and to sell the men who were looking for gold. One young friend advised Strauss: ”You should have brought pants to sell. In the goldfields we need strong pants that don’t wear out”. So Levi Strauss took some of his denim to the nearest tailor and had a pair of pants. The miner was so pleased with his pants that he told other miners about the wonderful new Levi’s pants. Soon Levi Strauss had to open a shop to manufacture enough trousers for the miners. The miners wanted trousers that were comfortable to ride on horses, and that they could bend over easily to pick up the gold from under their feet, and which had big useful pockets. One miner complained that the gold was tearing his pockets. So Levi put metal corners in the pockets to make them stronger. Very soon, miners and cowboys from all over came to get fitted up with Levi’s pants. Today, more than a hundred years later. Levi’s pants walk the world as Levi’s blue jeans.
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She Went To Sleep And Woke Up 30 Years Later
The real-life story of Annie Shapiro - who fell into a coma at age 50 in 1963 - is more remarkable than the movie based on her miraculous re-awakening. When she suddenly awoke nearly 30 years later in 1992, she was a 79-year-old granny, devastated by her appearance and the way the world had changed. Just after she emerged from her years of darkness, she told me: "When I went to sleep, I was a darn good-looking woman. But in the mirror, all I see is an old lady with bags around her eyes, wrinkles and grey hair. She could not believe that her husband Martin was an old man of 81 and that her teenage son and 25-year-old daughter Marilyn were middle-aged. She was awe-struck to learn about cordless telephones and spaceships flights. The talented business-woman, who had run two apron shops near Toronto, Canada, before her illness, fell into a coma on Nov 22, 1963, aged 50. She was watching news reports on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy on her black-and-white TV set when she suffered a massive stroke. For the next two years, Mrs Shapiro was totally paralysed, with her eyes staring wide open. Her husband would put drops in her eyes every few hours to keep them from drying out.
Mr Shapiro, steel foundry worked, said he dressed and fed her "like a totally helpless child."
"She couldn’t think or walk," he said.
At night, he lay next to his sleeping beauty in the darkness. He consulted experts, but no one could help her.
After two years of physical therapy, he finally got her to the point where she could set up and walk, assisted on either side. She could not see but could eat simple food.
As the years passed, Mrs Shapiro’s son and daughter married and had two children each, and most of her friends died. The Vietnam War ended, astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, communism collapsed and the world entered the computer age. During her long sleep, Mrs Shapiro’s body began breaking down. She had cataract surgery, a hysterectomy and a hip replacement.
But amazingly, on Oct 14, 1992, she suddenly snapped out of her coma. Mr Shapiro, who had retired and moved his ill wife to a retirement community in Florida, was flabbergasted. "I was lying beside her in the bed," he said, "when she sat up and said: :Turn on the television. I want to see the I Love Lucy show." It was like a dead person come to life." Mrs Shapiro got her first shock when she realised the TV was in colour, not black-and-white. But she was rally stunned by her husband’s grandfatherly appearance and her own wrinkled face.
"When she first looked in the mirror, she wanted to die," said Mr Shapiro. "She hollered and then cried over all those lost years." Her first thoughts were for her son Marshall. The day before her stroke, Mr Shapiro had kicked the 16-year-old youth out of the house because he had crashed the family car.
"She wanted me to bring our son home," he said. As he dialled Marshall’s telephone number in Toronto, he told his wife that her boy was now aged 48, married and father of two. At first, Mrs Shapiro was afraid to get on the line and talk to him because it was a cordless phone. "The phone didn’t have any wires," she told me. "A voice was coming out of it and I thought it must be magic." Then she asked to telephone her sister Rose, only to be told that she and her husband were dead - and her three brothers had died , too. Mrs Shapiro’s daughter Marilyn Pomerantz, 55, flew from Canada to Florida to help her mother adjust. As the first shockwaves ebbed, Mrs Shapiro desperately tried to catch up on what had happened in the world. The woman who had been silent for 30 years stayed up around the clock for two days and did not stop talking. Dr Glenn Englander, who was treating her for high blood pressure the day before she awakened from her coma, called her recovery a miracle. "I gave her something to lower her blood pressure," she said. "If I did something unknowingly to help her, I’d like to find out so I can do it for others."
The most touching part of the miracle was the renewed romance between Shapiro and her husband, who had cared for her all those years, refusing to have her placed in a nursing home. "When I made my marriage vows and promised to stay together in sickness and in health, I meant it," said Mr Shapiro on a national TV show, "not like the people of today." Our romance began all over again. "We both could hardly walk, but Annie wanted me to take her dancing," he said. Sadly, her husband died three years ago. And now, Mrs Shapiro, 85, lives alone in a Toronto nursing home. According to her daughter, she sleeps a lot but when she is awake, she often time-travels between tragic 1963 and the good final years she had with the man who loved her forever.
Ron Laytner
The Straits Times, Sunday Plus, April 5, 1998.
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The history of jeans

The beginnings

Denim and jeans - where do the names come from?

The word jeans comes from a kind of material that was made in Europe. The material, called jean, was named after sailors from Genoa in Italy, because they wore clothes made from it. The word 'denim' probably came from the name of a French material, serge de Nimes: serge (a kind of material) from Nimes (a town in France).

The 18th century

At first, jean cloth was made from a mixture of things. However, in the eighteenth century as trade, slave labour, and cotton plantations increased, jean cloth was made completely from cotton. Workers wore it because the material was very strong and it did not wear out easily. It was usually dyed with indigo, a dye taken from plants in the Americas and India, which made jean cloth a dark blue colour.

PLANTATION: (n) a large farm where a single crop is grown

DYE: (v) to change the colour of something. (n) a chemical used to change something's colour

The 19th century – The California Gold Rush

In 1848, gold was found in California (not too far from San Francisco) and the famous Gold Rush began. The gold miners wanted clothes that were strong and did not tear easily. In 1853, a man called Leob Strauss left his home in New York and moved to San Francisco, where he started a wholesale business, supplying clothes. Strauss later changed his name from Leob to Levi.

WHOLESALE BUSINESS (n) buying large amounts of something & selling it to shops

Rivets

A big problem with the miners' clothes were the pockets, which easily tore away from the jeans. A man called Jacob Davis had the idea of using metal rivets (fasteners) to hold the pockets and the jeans together so that they wouldn't tear. Davis wanted to patent his idea, but he didn't have enough money, so in 1872, he wrote to Levi Strauss and offered Strauss a deal if Strauss would pay for the patent. Strauss accepted, and he started making copper-riveted 'waist overalls' (as jeans were called then).

In 1886, Levi sewed a leather label on their jeans. The label showed a picture of a pair of jeans that were being pulled between two horses. This was to advertise how strong Levi jeans were: even two horses could not tear them apart.

RIVET: (n) a strong metal fastener

PATENT: (v) if you patent something it is legally your invention and other people cannot steal it.

OVERALLS: (n) a loose fitting garment that covers the legs and chest

How jeans became popular

The 1930's: Westerns

In the 1930's, Hollywood made lots of western movies. Cowboys - who often wore jeans in the movies-became very popular. Many Americans who lived in the eastern states went for vacations on 'dude ranches' and took pairs of denim 'waist overalls' back east with them when they went home.

DUDE RANCH: (n) a holiday resort in the western US where people can ride horses and pretend to be cowboys

The 1940's: War

Fewer jeans were made during the time of World War 2, but 'waist overalls' were introduced to the world by American soldiers, who sometimes wore them when they were off duty. After the war, Levi began to sell their clothes outside the American West. Rival companies, like Wrangler and Lee, began to compete with Levi for a share of this new market.

OFF DUTY: (v) time when a soldier is not working

RIVAL: (n) something in competition with you

The 1950's: Rebels

In the 1950's, denim became popular with young people. It was the symbol of the teenage rebel in TV programmes and movies (like James Dean in the 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause). Some schools in the USA banned students from wearing denim. Teenagers called the waist overalls 'jean pants' - and the name stayed.

BAN: (v) forbid; order people to stop doing something

The 1960's: Hippies & the Cold War

In the 1960's many, many university and college students wore jeans. Different styles of jeans were made, to match the 60's fashions: embroidered jeans, painted jeans, psychedelic jeans...

In many non-western countries, jeans became a symbol of 'Western decadence' and were very hard to get. US companies said that they often received letters from people all around the world asking them to send the writer a pair of jeans

EMBROIDERED: (adj) a brightly colored sewn design

PSYCHEDELIC: (adj) clothing with brightly colored patterns

DECADENCE: (n) actions that show a lowering of moral standards

The 1970's: Sweatshops

As regulations on world trade became more relaxed in the late 1970's, jeans started to be made more and more in sweatshops in countries in the South. Because the workers were paid very little, jeans became cheaper. More people in the countries of the South started wearing jeans.

SWEATSHOP: (n) a place where people work very hard for very low pay

The 1980's: Designer Jeans

In the 1980's jeans finally became high fashion clothing, when famous designers started making their own styles of jeans, with their own labels on them. Sales of jeans went up and up.

The 1990's: Recession

In the worldwide recession of the 1990's, the sale of jeans has stopped growing.

RECESSION: (n) a period when the economic situation gets worse

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