The worst thing about the millennium is that we are now being bombarded with lists. We are offered: the best news stories of the past 100 years; the most important people; the most outstanding athletes -- to name a few.

I have a list. Mine is, "The Greatest Inventions of the Century" -- the ones that changed our lives so we'll never be the same.The first is the mute button on the TV remote, created so mankind would no longer have to listen to commercials.

The mute button was invented by Forest Mute in his garage in Hackensack, N.J. Mute was looking for a method of bypassing Howard Stern on the air when he accidentally deadened the sound on his set. When he could do the same on color TV, he knew he was a success.

The person who has never received fair credit for his contribution to our culture is Lamar Beach, who developed the first Scotch tape dispenser. Until Beach's invention, people pulled the tape off its roll and got it tangled all over their fingers. Beach's device enables us to tear off pieces of tape without a fuss.

Virginia Wild was an ordinary housewife until she came up with the idea for eye shadow. She noticed that when she got up in the morning, her eyes looked glassy and were completely lacking in mystery.

So she picked up a piece of charcoal from the fireplace and darkened the area around her eyes. For the first time, men became attracted to her, and when word got out about it, eye shadow became de rigueur in the free world. Virginia became a zillionaire and bought all the coal mines in Pennsylvania to assure her eye shadow company an adequate supply.

Zion Zimrod was the inventor of "fat-free fat." For years, most of the large American food companies were trying to come up with fat-free fat to make fat-free foods taste better. Zion got the idea to use chicken fat. He put the fat in a microwave oven at 1,000 degrees and then set it on fire. The residue was fat free, and not one white rat who tasted it gained a pound. Unfortunately, Zion forgot to patent it and hasn't made a dime on his discovery, although two out of three doctors recommend it.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate