The pads in your bathroom started as WWI battlefield bandages π©Ή . . . Kimberly-Clark developed 'cellucotton' in 1914 as a cotton substitute for wound dressings on the Western Front. French Red Cross nurses around 1918 quietly began using the surplus bandages for their periods. The company noticed, and in 1920 launched Kotex β the first mass-market disposable pad β made from the exact same material that had packed shrapnel wounds at Verdun.
Source
Smithsonian Magazine, 2018, 'How Kotex Sanitary Pads Made Their Debut After World War I'; also Kimberly-Clark corporate history archives
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