80 Years After the Invention of the Tampon, Another Massive Breakthrough

80 years ago, Tampax founder Dr. Earl Haas invented the modern tampon, dramatically improving the lives of countless women.  Tampax, now a brand of Proctor & Gamble, has hit the jackpot again, discovering a solution to the question of anti-gravity, and possibly time travel.

This much is real: Back in the 1930s, a medical doctor named Earl Haas innovated a product which he called the tampon.  He based his new product on input from his wife and his female patients, as well as from ideas that dated as far back as Hippocrates.

It was a gigantic breakthrough.  In fact, the concept was utterly foreign to most women, and the subject matter incredibly sensitive.  The last thing men wanted to hear about was menstruation. 

80 years later, it's still near the bottom of the list.  The only reason I'm willing to talk about it is I tend to go right at things I find disturbing. 

For years, the Tampax marketing campaign was to deploy an army of "Tampax Ladies" who went to college campuses and department stores, speaking to women in hushed tones about the product, and explaining how to use it.  Gradually, it caught on.   

To fully grasp how revolutionary this was, all you need to do is read about a place where tampons still aren't available, and where people have never heard of them.  Like Uganda, for example.

Living with her older brothers, Resty, 16, didn’t learn about menstruation.  Resty used paper and the local ebikokooma leaves for her first three periods, before switching to old rags. “But I was scared to come to school and go near the students when I had the periods,” she admits.

Hooray for tampons, and for Tampax.  We won't get into side effects like Toxic Shock Syndrome or the hundreds of millions of plastic applicators, with a half life of 25,000 years each, that end up in landfills and the oceans every year.

We're trying to keep it positive, okay?

In the meantime, the Tampax brand has apparently achieved another breakthrough, this one so unexpected that it caught the entire scientific establishment by surprise.  The new Tampax Pearl products are advertised as having an "Anti-Gravity LeakGuard Braid, which helps stop leaks before they happen."

Tampax Pearl, with built-in anti-gravity and time travel capabilities.

The concept of an anti-gravity device has been a favorite of science fiction for nearly 200 years.  And serious scientists have been researching the possibilities of eliminating the effects of gravity - without success - for more than 100 years.

Warp drives, diametric drives, gyroscopes, magnetic levitation - all have been tried, and all have failed.  Indeed, Einstein's theory of general relativity suggests that anti-gravity devices are impossible.      

"If the Tampax claims are true, it will change science as we know it," said George Smoot, game show contestant and 2006 Nobel Prize winner in Physics. 

"The anti-gravity aspect is amazing, but what intrigues me most is the idea that the product can travel backwards through time to stop leaks before they happen.  The implications of that are astonishing."

The Proctor & Gamble public relations department was tight-lipped about the discovery.  "The technology in Tampax Pearl is proprietary," they said in a carefully worded statement.

"To guard the product's competitive advantage, we feel that it's best to refrain from publishing our findings at this time.  We continue to stand behind the Tampax brand, which offers high-quality convenience to millions of women every day."

Should the Tampax anti-gravity device prove to be real, Tampax will be eligible to claim a one-million euro prize from the Institute for Gravity Research, based in Waldaschaff, Germany.