TIL that George Washington Carver didn't really invent peanut butter but just popularized it. He made some other pretty cool things like peanut rubber for WWII.
Ok, it sounds like you're making shit up, although I know it's true.
There was also hemp oil and hemp rope, used extensively in planes and ships. Then it got criminalized (or re-criminalized, I forget) right after the war ended. Gotta keep those Dupont execs rolling in the patents money, amirite!
Still, this is some gourmet Willy Wonka fantasy material.
Has a comic/manga made GWC into a steampunk superhero scientist yet?
I didn't find the peanut rubber, but did find that
Dr. George Washington Carver's work resulted in the creation of more than 300 products from peanuts, contributing greatly to the economic improvement of the rural South. source
OP's article states that
He helped Henry Ford make peanut rubber for cannons for World War II.
But I can't find a actual source for that just endless repeated comments to that effect. I wonder if whoever-originated-that-idea conflated Carver's peanut work with his other work with Ford:
By the time World War II began, Ford had made repeated journeys to Tuskegee to convince Carver to come to Dearborn and help him develop a synthetic rubber to help compensate for wartime rubber shortages. Carver arrived on July 19, 1942, and set up a laboratory in an old water works building in Dearborn. He and Ford experimented with different crops, including sweet potatoes and dandelions, eventually devising a way to make the rubber substitute from goldenrod, a plant weed. Carver died in January 1943, Ford in April 1947, but the relationship between their two institutions continued to flourish. Source
sad when the guy used by many to celebrate the role of Black innovation in US history doesn’t even get a full picture painted of him most times he’s brought up!