Birthday profile

Bette Nesmith Graham

Bette Nesmith Graham, American inventor of Liquid Paper (died 1980)

Born
March 23, 1924
Died
May 12, 1980
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1924

About Bette Nesmith Graham

Bette Nesmith Graham was an American inventor, entrepreneur, businesswoman, and philanthropist from the state of Texas. While working as a secretary in the 1950s, she developed the correction fluid known as Liquid Paper. Graham founded the Liquid Paper Company in 1958, built it into a multimillion-dollar business with international reach, and sold it to Gillette Corporation in 1979. She was the mother of musician Michael Nesmith. About a dozen colleagues asked McMurry for the product, so she created a label and the name "Mistake Out". By 1975, "Liquid Paper was producing 25 million bottles a year and holding a vast share of a multimillion-dollar market that had spawned several competitors, like Wite-Out".

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Bette Nesmith Graham timeline

  1. Graham founded the Liquid Paper Company in 1958, built it into a multimillion-dollar business with international reach, and sold it to Gillette Corporation in 1979.
  2. By 1975, "Liquid Paper was producing 25 million bottles a year and holding a vast share of a multimillion-dollar market that had spawned several competitors, like Wite-Out".

The world when Bette Nesmith Graham was born

Bette Nesmith Graham was born in 1924. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1924

  • #1 song"It Had to Be You" – Isham Jones
  • Top movieThe Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks)
  • Best-selling bookSo Big – Edna Ferber

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
  • Top headlineCalvin Coolidge elected president in a landslide
  • Technology milestoneIBM founded
  • Defining fadMah-jongg craze sweeps America
  • Notable inventionSpiral-bound notebook
  • World population1.95 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderCalvin Coolidge
  • Sports championWashington Senators (World Series)
  • U.S. population114.1M

1924 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Bette Nesmith Graham's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19242026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$5,800$435,000
Average income$3,520$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population114.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.