10 Everyday Inventions That Exist Thanks To War

Feminine hygiene isn't usually at the forefront of military planners' minds, and that stayed as true as ever during the grim attrition combat of the First World War. Nevertheless, it was in the mud and chaos of the trenches that the modern sanitary towel was born, albeit in a roundabout way.

An ultra-absorbent substance developed by a US firm was deployed by the crateload after the country entered the First World War in 1917. It was designed to be used as medical wadding for dressing wounds, of which there were dismayingly huge amounts among the combatants on the front line.

Something that went along with large numbers of mangled soldiers was large numbers of female nurses. It took little time before this absorbent material found another use in helping tame the monthly biological house-clearing the body of a lady undergoes.

Disposable sanitary pads had existed since the late 1880s, but the cheap, wood pulp-based absorbent material was less expensive and a lot easier to use. Kotex saw a money-spinner in making the life of the average woman of the era slightly less grindingly bleak, and first marketed it for this purpose in 1921.