Christmas cracker as rival varieties came on the market. The other elements of the modern cracker—the gifts, paper hats and varied designs—were all introduced by Tom Smith's son, Walter Smith, to differentiate his product from the rival cracker manufacturers which had suddenly sprung up. Tom Smith merged with Caley Crackers in 1953. A memorial water fountain to Tom Smith and his family stands in Finsbury Square, London. The longest Christmas cracker pulling chain consisted of 1081 people and was achieved by The Harrodian School in Barnes, London, UK, on 10 December 2015. Passengers on commercial flights in the United States are explicitly
R. Tom Baker R. Tom Baker R. Tom Baker is an inorganic chemist known for the development and application of inorganic transition metal-based catalysis. R. Tom Baker was born in Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada. He attended University of British Columbia (UBC) as an undergraduate student and earned his B.Sc in Chemistry in 1975. He then conducted his graduate research work under of M. Frederick Hawthorne at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After he earned his Ph.D in Inorganic Chemistry in 1980, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow with Philip S. Skell at Pennsylvania State University. From 1981 to 1996, Baker