Today in 1965, the Mariner 4 spacecraft took some close-ups of the surface of Mars.
These were the first photos ever taken of another world’s surface.
But what does this have to do with rhyming?
Well, a decade before Mariner 4 got to Mars, a company famous for its advertising jokingly offered its customers a chance to go to the Red Planet, and a very serious customer tried to get them to follow through.
Burma-Shave was a shaving cream that became super well known not because of its product but because of its advertising.
All over the United States, the company put up these little red signs with white lettering.
Each of them contained part of a poem, so as people drove through an area, they’d get these witty little rhyming jingles.
Most people took these ads in the spirit in which they were given, but a few times there were poems that were clearly meant as fun wordplay and people took them literally.
One jingle read in part “Rip a fender off your car / Mail it in for a half-pound jar” and people sent in fenders!
Burma-Shave eventually did sent shaving cream to people who had sent in their car fenders.
But they were stymied when a Wisconsin man, Arliss French, tried to take them up on an offer that said “A trip to Mars / for 900 empty jars.”
At first they tried to explain to the guy that this was a one-way trip, but he sent in jingle-worthy replies that said, sure, fine, just tell me where to send my jars.
Eventually Burma-Shave found a workaround: they sent French and his wife to the town of Moers, Germany (the name is pronounced “Mars”).
The prize winners were happy and the company won itself even more publicity, though I have to hope they didn’t offer any more trips to other planets in their poems after that.
In June, a design studio in France decided to add a little something to the 2025 Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier.
They made a walk-through installation in a courtyard out of nearly 800 old baguettes.
“Paysage de Pain” was supposed to make a point about how a lot of leftover bread could be reused instead of thrown away.
On hot days, did it get toasty in that installation?
Did Burma-Shave Offer to Send a Contest Winner to Mars? (Snopes)
780 leftover baguettes turn into public pavilion by MERO studios in montpellier (designboom)
