I catch myself using the idiom "the best thing since sliced bread" every now and then, not thinking much of it. It's an idiom. Why would I be spending my free time thinking about idioms? Well, I thought about this one. Why sliced bread, you know? Apparently, bread-making is one of the oldest food technologies dating back to the Neolithic era (the last stage of the Stone Age) and was one of the first food products mass manufactured with automatic machinery. Thus, it was through this supposedly groundbreaking bread-making technology that many other inventions and patents were created (e.g. the bread slicer). That makes sense. But I think I like my version of the story is better.