The origin of the Tee shirt is obscure. The shirt has been a part of clothing since
ancient Egypt, consequently, there have been many garments which resemble a
Tee shirt. A type of cotton T-shirt was developed in England around 1880 as a form of
underwear to be worn under men's shirts. It was originally called a "vest" or"under-vest". From 1913 to 1948 there was continuous development.
Early prototypes of the Tee shirt emerged as an undergarment during World War I, although accounts of its origin vary -- some sources peg it to the "light undershirts" worn by U.S. Navy sailors starting in 1913; others say they were worn by European soldiers during the hot summers and were the envy of American troops clad in wool uniforms.
Whatever the case, the Tee shirt became an official word when it was included in Merriam-Webster's dictionary in the 1920s.
Jockey International Inc. developed what became the modern T-shirt in 1932, at the request of the University of Southern California Trojans football team. Officials were looking for an inexpensive undergarment to absorb sweat and to prevent a player's shoulder pads from causing chafing.
The Smithsonian museum has one of the oldest printed T-shirts on record in its collection: a campaign shirt for New York Gov. Thomas Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign -- "Dew it with Dewey."
The Tee shirt became a status symbol
The Tee shirt became a status symbol by the 1950s when it was worn by such icons as James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire."
If you've ever wondered how many Tee-shirts one person can wear at a time, just ask Aaron Waltke, 22, a recent graduate of Indiana University in Bloomington. In December, he broke the Guinness Book of World Records of most Tee-shirts worn
by a man at one time: 160. He bested Matt McAllister, a radio DJ in Santa Barbara, Calif., who in September put on 155 shirts (four hours and more than 100 pounds). You can see Mr. McAllister's challenge on YouTube.com.
And in the latest innovation, Tee shirts are now sporting Philips' Lumalive technology. They were on display during last month's Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. The technology features flexible arrays of colored LEDs that are integrated directly into the cloth
Tee Shirts bring you these weekly history lessons:
December 29, 1916
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published
On this day in 1916, James Joyce's book Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published in New York. The book had been previously serialized in Ezra Pound's review The Egoist.
James Joyce was born in Dublin, the eldest of 10 children of a cheerful ne'er-do-well who eventually went bankrupt. Joyce attended Catholic school and University College in Dublin, where he learned Dano-Norwegian so he could read the plays of Henrik Ibsen in the original. In college, he began a lifetime of literary rebellion, self-publishing an essay rejected by the school's literary magazine adviser.
After graduation, Joyce moved to Paris. He resolved to study medicine to support himself while writing but soon gave it up. He returned to Dublin to visit his mother's deathbed and remained to teach school and work odd jobs. On June 16, 1904, he met Nora, whom he convinced to return to Europe with him. The couple settled in Trieste, where they had two children, and then in Zurich. Joyce struggled with serious eye problems, undergoing 25 operations for various troubles between 1917 and 1930.
In 1914, he published The Dubliners, and his 1915 novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, brought him fame and the patronage of several wealthy people, including Edith Rockefeller.
In 1918, his revolutionary stream of consciousness novel Ulysses began to be serialized in the American journal Little Review. However, the U.S. Post Office stopped the publication's distribution in December of that year on the grounds that the novel was obscene. Sylvia Beach, owner of bookstore Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, where Joyce moved in 1920, published the novel herself in 1922, but it was banned in the United Kingdom and the United States until 1933.
Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, was published in 1939, and Joyce died in 1941.
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