Another weird throwaway ‘jewish invention’ claim I have encountered on Reddit is that jews invented shampoo. (1)
Now it is a weird claim because historically people have been using various hair cleansing agents from oils in ancient Babylonia and classical Greece to Castilian soap in the medieval era – (2) contrary to popular myths propagating during the Enlightenment medieval Europeans were actually rather clean and placed a premium on bathing and washing – (3) but it probably refers to when Europeans first got a shampoo that looked and felt like what we’d currently considered to be shampoo.
This was in 1903 when the German chemist Hans Schwarzkopf created a powdered purple-coloured shampoo that dissolved in water called ‘Schaumpon’ (4) which then became a sensation in the United States in 1904. (5)
So, I am guessing that the originator of this claim is thinking of Schwarzkopf and for reason has assumed he was jewish – he was in fact German – hence the claim.
Thus we can see that shampoo isn’t a ‘jewish invention’ either!
References
(1) https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/18q24ls/what_are_some_things_that_were_invented_by_jews/
(2) https://hairstory.com/en-uk/blogs/news/the-history-of-shampoo-shampoo-origins-and-evolution-hairstory?srsltid=AfmBOooOUDrbQwOZ-Szy6cssXoD7rsNp3ornBv0dLtKFlme1wLe81XyD
(3) On this see for example: https://www.medievalists.net/2023/11/people-middle-ages-baths/
(4) https://hairstory.com/en-uk/blogs/news/the-history-of-shampoo-shampoo-origins-and-evolution-hairstory?srsltid=AfmBOooOUDrbQwOZ-Szy6cssXoD7rsNp3ornBv0dLtKFlme1wLe81XyD; https://www.purplle.com/magazine/article/the-hair-story-of-shampoo-history-of-hair-sha?srsltid=AfmBOopQoo57bWT-7qlxHb2oUnntpHIfDlL1_a2d2_1VWGzWPJSEC8uu
(5) https://www.gethistories.com/p/a-history-of-shampoo?hide_intro_popup=true
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