The Story of Blue Jeans<1>
Blue jeans are the most popular type of clothing in the world; but they are not modern! In fact, jeans have existed for over 160 years.
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In 1996, someone found some very old clothes in an old mine in Nevada, USA; they included a pair of dirty old jeans. Today, those jeans are very valuable, and they are now in the Levi Strauss Archival Collection, in San Francisco. The jeans, which are over 140 years old, are the oldest pair of Levi's 501 jeans in the world.
They are almost the same as a modern pair of 501's; there are just some small differences in the detail. For instance, today's 501's have two back pockets, the old pair just has one.
Jeans were the classic clothes of the American West.
In 1853, a young tailor from Germany, called Levi Strauss, began working in San Francisco; Levi sold thick canvas to miners; the miners used the canvas to make tents.
One day, a miner told Levi that he could not find trousers that were strong enough for work in the gold mines. Levi decided to make some trousers out of canvas.
Very soon, he had sold all the canvas trousers he had made! They were just what miners wanted. [208 words]