“Gravity is what you get when you eat too much and too fast” was included in a 1931 list titled “Boners: Being a collection of schoolboy wisdom, or knowledge as it is sometimes written, compiled from classrooms and examination papers.” The jocular one-line saying found renewed popularity on the Internet as early as 1983.
Google Books
Boners:
Being a collection of schoolboy wisdom, or knowledge as it is sometimes written, compiled from classrooms and examination papers
By Alexander Abingdon
New York, NY: Blue Ribbon Books
1931
Pg. 9:
Gravity is what you get when you eat too much and too fast.
5 October 1931, The Morning Oregonian (Portland, OR), pg. 7, col. 4:
BONERS
Boners are actual humorous tid-bits found in examination papers, essays, etc., by teachers.
(...)
Gravity is what you get when you eat too much and too fast.
18 November 1938, Scandia (KS) High News, pg. 3, col. 4:
Gravity is what you get when you eat too much and too fast.
Google Groups: net.jokes
Douglas Hoyt
8/2/83
(...)
Gravity is what you get when you eat too much and too fast.
Google Groups: comp.graphics
Ron Dippold
10/9/92
(...)
Gravity: What you get when you eat too much and too fast.
Google Groups: rec.humor
Alan Silverstein
12/4/93
(...)
Gravity: What you get when you eat too much and too fast.
Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.
Recent entries:
•“Welcome to growing older. Where all the foods and drinks you’ve loved for years suddenly seem determined to destroy you” (4/17)
•“Date someone who drinks with you instead of complaining that you drink” (4/17)
•Entry in progress—BP18 (4/17)
•Entry in progress—BP17 (4/17)
•Entry in progress—BP16 (4/17)
More new entries...
Above, Big Apple Corner at 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Google Maps. Stolen and missing, 2021-2024.
Above, John J. Fitz Gerald, from the Aug. 15, 1931, Binghamton (NY) Press, pg. 14.
Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce "The Big Apple," a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.
Also listen to a 1937 "The Big Apple" song by Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra. See a 1929 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald and a 1931 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald.
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