Earlier this week, after the Boston Bruins hockey team lost another game, player Blake Wheeler told a reporter that the team’s losing streak was “a when it rains, it pours type of thing.”
The next day, commenting on the Democratic health care proposal in Congress, Republican Congressman Dave Camp from Michigan said: “When it rains it pours. This amendment only increases the government involvement in health care, raises more taxes and opens more taxpayer subsidies to illegal immigrants.”
Indeed, nowadays, most uses of the “when it rains, it pours” tend to be negative.
But the most famous use of the phrase, the original use that popularized it, was designed to be positive.
It dates back to 1911, when the Morton Salt Company developed a new breakthrough in table salt technology.
Up until then, most table salt was sold in a raw, coarse-grained form that clumped and caked in humid weather.
The Morton food scientists solved this problem by reducing the grain size and adding a small amount of magnesium carbonate, an anti-caking agent.
As a result, the salt didn’t cake and clump. It could be poured or shaken out as nicely as dry sand regardless of the humidity.
The Morton execs asked their ad agency – the renowned N.W. Ayer & Son firm – to create a catchy ad slogan for this new and improved salt.
Morton rejected a couple of initial slogan ideas, but the Ayer admen eventually came up with a winner: “When it rains, it pours.” It put a witty, positive twist on the old English proverb “It never rains but it pours.”
As expected, American consumers of that era – who previously had to put up with inconveniently clumpy salt when the humidity was high – knew exactly what the slogan meant. It meant that Morton Salt would stay dry and come out of the box or shaker perfectly, even when it was raining outside and humid inside.
It was a good thing (unlike the way the phrase is used today).
The Ayer firm also created the familiar image of the little girl with an umbrella to go with the slogan. This famous combination was trademarked by Morton and first used in commerce on November 6, 1914.
Here are some of the other famous quotes and phrases linked to November 6:
• “I recommend to you to take care of the minutes: for hours will take care of themselves.” - A famous piece of advice written by Lord Chesterfield (Philip Dormer Stanhope) in a letter to his son, dated November 6, 1747.
• “They misunderestimated me.” - Another gem for collectors of Bushisms, uttered by President George W. Bush on November 6, 2000 during a visit to Bentonville, Arkansas.
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