Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón was a politician, general, and President who had a significant influence on Mexican and Spanish politics in the nineteenth century. He is famous for leading the troops and winning the Battle of the Alamo. Throughout his career he had great success and equally great failure. At one point he was exiled from Mexico and living in New York when he came across, what he thought was, a brilliant idea. In 1869 at the age of 74 he imported Mexican chicle to the United States with the intent of vulcanizing it to make rubber for carriage tires. His efforts did not meet much success. Thomas Adams, Santa Anna's American secretary, bought a ton of the material from Santa Anna for further development. Shortly after in 1874 Santa Anna was allowed to return to Mexico where he lived out the rest of his days dying in Mexico City in 1876.
Adams kept experimenting on the chicle adding various materials to it to see what he could make. Finally one of his combinations succeeded. He added sugar and found that the resultant material was pleasant to chew. He named his new product Chiclets which are still popular today.
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