the.com/straw
a humble tube that defeats physics by letting your lungs win against the atmosphere.
means a thin tube, traditionally of paper or plastic, used to suck up a drink — or, separately, the dried stalks of grain left after threshing.
from From Old English 'strēaw,' meaning the dried stems of cereal plants, kin to Old High German 'strō' and tied to the root of 'strew' — for straw was literally the stuff you scattered across floors and beds. The drinking sense came much later, named because the first such tubes were exactly that: hollow stalks of dried grain, pressed into service before paper and plastic ever appeared.
- vacuum trick
- air pressure pushes drinks up, not your suck
- ancient flex
- Sumerians sipped beer through gold straws
- paper original
- rye-grass straws gave the tool its name
- bendy patent
- invented in 1937 for hospital patients
- height limit
- a straw over 10 meters tall is unsippable
the last straw — idiom referring to the final small problem that causes someone to reach their breaking point, from aesop's fable about a camel's burden
strawberry — red fruit with seeds on the outside, cultivated worldwide since ancient rome with modern production led by china, usa, and mexico