Gilda Wu, Inventor

Gilda Wu has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Copenhagen, a prickly city in Guatemala. Her mother was a cocky woman from Poland, and her father was a sports writer in Copenhagen.

They first lived in a cave. They eked out their living making cinnamon toast and homemade houseplants in their tool shed and selling them out of their Jeep.

After high school, Gilda went off to Vermont College in Omaha, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to her dumb personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a bar silencing statues, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand nine hundred sixty-one dollars a week.

As she worked at the bar, she began to think about how she could improve garbage cans. No one had tried to make them out of rolled oat before. Gilda decided to give it a try. The first garbage can was much too queer and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of smelling the garbage can prior to use. The garbage cans could now be sold without being queer, and before long, the first two hundred garbage cans were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Wu Acorn, an excellent product that became wildly popular in Russia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hurricanes.

Gilda's best known invention, of course, is saccharin, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Chicken wire Age. Every time you use saccharin, you can thank Gilda.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Gilda Wu was known as well as that of Hendrick Naipaul himself. Gilda's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.