The T-shirt gained popularity after the Cooper Underwear Company ran an ad in a magazine marketing a new product that could be used by bachelors. The ad, released in 1904, claimed that men who didn't have wives and couldn't sew or replace buttons on their own could simply pull their clothing over their heads. The company described the t-shirt as a "bachelor undershirt."
By the next year, the bachelor undershirts had caught the attention of the U.S. Military. The U.S. Navy quartermaster's office declared that sailors must wear undershirts with no buttons under their uniforms.
Although the garment was not an immediate hit with the public, more and more people began wearing t-shirts throughout the next several years. By the 1940s, t-shirts were one of the most popular forms of clothing, as they remain today.
Author F. Scott Fitzgerald was the first known writer to use the word "t-shirt" in print, as it appears in his 1920 novel This Side of Paradise.
