Who Scooped the First Ice-Cream Cone?

Joshua Korenblat

Most ice-cream cones end the same way, (1_____) sweetly on the tongue. But how did the first ice-cream cone begin? Tales of the cone’s invention (2_____) on one spot: the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. In one story, an ice-cream vendor ran out of serving dishes and was rescued by Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian immigrant selling Middle Eastern waffles at the next stand. Another Syrian immigrant claimed it was his idea (3_____) a hot waffle, let it harden, then plop in the ice-cream. Yet a third claimant was former (4_____) acrobat Charles Menches, who is said to have peeled away one side of an ice-cream sandwich to make an (5_____) vase for flowers, then molded the other side to hold the remaining ice cream. Hamwi and Menches went on to create ice-cream-cone empires.

One earlier claim gets lost in the hubbub: Five months before the World’s Fair, a patent (6_____) to candy-maker Italo Marchiony: ”I claim as my invention ... a molding apparatus for creating ice-cream cups and the like.” If only he’d said cones.

Why Do We Have Eyebrows?

In his (7_____) weird book The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin maintained that human eyebrows (8_____) from the vestigial remnants of the scattering of long hairs one finds in the very same place on other mammals, including chimps and dogs. But why were eyebrows preserved, while most of the rest of our hair was lost?
In accordance with (9_____) views on sex selection, he believed that those human hairs which remain are those which are (10_____) to the opposite sex.
However, another suggestion is that they're important for (11_____) facial expressions that are more easily recognised by other individuals in one's social group.
They also serve the practical purpose of stopping sweat and rain (12_____) down your forehead into your eyes.