Cool t-shirts are more popular than ever, but just how did these articles of clothing get their start? Although most people think of them as fairly modern inventions, the first cool t-shirts for sale were printed in the early parts of the 20th century. Funny t-shirts, concert t-shirts and movie t-shirts are probably the most popular types of tees, and these have also been around longer than many people think. In fact, the first movie t-shirts were printed in 1939 for "The Wizard of Oz." Cool t-shirts are a huge part of the American economy, with 91 percent of people in the United States claiming they have a "favorite t-shirt." Cotton, which is still a huge industry in the southern part of the country, is used to make all these cool t-shirts for sale.

Manufacturers can produce 1,200 funny t-shirts from one acre of cotton, and a total of 2 billion t-shirts of every kind are sold across the globe each year. Some very cool t-shirts are charitable in nature. The Salvation Army takes in millions of t-shirt donations annually, which are later auctioned off by the pound to third world countries. These are more rewarding in some ways than the cool t-shirts for sale in retail stores, because many people would have nothing to wear otherwise. And if you like funny t-shirts, you might be amused by the oldest printed t-shirt on record, which is located at the Smithsonian. The shirt simply states, "Dew-It with Dewey." If something is old enough to be at the Smithsonian, it must be old, which proves the longevity and lasting "coolness" of t-shirts in modern culture.