These go to eleven!

In Canada people welcome trick-or-treators by placing pumpkins called jack-o’-lanterns in their windows.
Also in Canada it is bad luck for a black cat to cross your path, enter your home, or even enter your ship.

In Canada people give trick-or-treaters sweets to make sure they are not played a trick on.

Children make Jack-o’-lanterns for hallowe’en.

Dressing up as witches, ghosts and beasts for trick-or-treating is done also.

I know, I know, it sounds like Jabberwocky to us readers in the USofA, and seems to make no sense whatsoever. You’ll just have to trust my sources that in Canada it’s all perfectly logical.

So, a Happy Halloween to you then, eh?

BONUS MATERIAL: As an extra quasi-holiday featurette, I’ve created the following poem, “Canadian Halloween”, from the 69 words quoted above, put into random order using a random number generator:

CANOLA INHALED ANEW
enter witches
they sweets path a In trick-or-treaters trick
as make is people enter make
by your is called Canada

pumpkins people
cat luck and jack-o’-lanterns black
not home your it done in your for hallowe’en
Jack-o’-lanterns Canada
even their for your to Children in played

In Also or on also
placing sure ship up are Dressing welcome
give to a bad beasts
Canada trick-or-treators
ghosts windows cross for

ICANN, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the non-profit, global coordinator of the Internet’s naming system. ICANN’s global Internet regulators met today in Singapore to “finalize rules for a major expansion of ‘generic top-level domains,’ that will clear the way for new offerings like .law, .coke or .nyc. Sites with those endings are expected to start rolling out late next year.” CNN.com tells the story in Forget .com, here’s .coke:

“Today’s decision will usher in a new Internet age,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors. “We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.”

Now, before you get all excited and start dreaming of registering “.wordlab” or “.snark” domain names, note the “gotcha”:

Crawford thinks dot-brand sites will be a hit with major companies. In addition to marketing benefits, they could help on the security front: HSBC, for example, could tell customers that a purported HSBC site isn’t legitimate unless it ends in .hsbc. And a company like Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) could market products at cellphones.verizon and store locations at losangeles.verizon.

But these benefits don’t come cheaply — or easily. ICANN charges at $185,000 per domain application, which Crawford says typically must include about 150 pages of policy documents.

Technical setup takes another $100,000 or so, he says, and upkeep can cost an additional $100,000 each year.

So there you have it — only “major companies” who can afford the cost and regulatory overhead will be able to buy into this, and the result will likely be more brand clutter and confusion, with new domains like .coke, .pepsi, .verizon, .hsbc flooding the Internet with millions more corporate websites. No longer would users just go to coke.com to find out — wait, why do users go there? — whatever they need to find out, but potentially there might be thousands of separate .coke sites. Any large company could basically build its own Internet now — imagine a self-contained, Chromewashed .google empire. And forget about just one “iCloud” for Apple — they could create a mega-cloud of .apple websites.

In addition to companies, non-profits, NGO’s, citizen groups, artists and any sort of non-corporate entity that can raise the funds could also create its own self-contained micro-Internet. Imagine legions of fans registering .gaga, .bieber, .kanye or .diddy domains for their fanblogs, with all that registration money going directly to the artists instead of GoDaddy. That is, if there’s anyone left who wants to have their own website, when a Facebook page is probably all they need. We’ll see.

It’s enough to make your head spin. And in the not-too-distant future, people will misplace websites and domains the way they misplace car keys. Honey, where did you park my files? Was it at cloud.apple, icloud.apple, app.apple, cloudapp.apple, cumulus-cloud.apple, docs.google, mydocs.google or vault.amazon?

Of course, there will be apps to help you remember where you put your digital life. Oh-yes-there-will-be.apps.

Now that’s a great name! Like a Bond Girl. And kudos to Chardonnay for not being shy about having it and putting herself out there. And good luck battling those wildfires!

For the rest of us who aren’t so lucky namewise, here is a Bond Girl name generator to help spice up our personal nomenclature. My Bond Girl names are Tawnie Small and Yoko Dos, both of which I quite like.

Spyburbia, baby — you heard it here first!

How do you fool so many in suburbia for so long? “She said they were from Canada.”

Yes Virginia, there really are spies everywhere, even in your neighborhood. Especially in your neighborhood, most likely. And if they say they’re from a mysterious blank spot on the globe called “Canada”, call the FBI immediately. [In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents]

Anyone remember that ’70s Charles Bronson B-movie classic, Telefon? As Wikipedia reminds us,

During the Cold War of the 1950s, the Soviet Union planted a number of long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents all over the United States, spies so thoroughly brainwashed that even they didn’t know they were agents; they could only be activated by a special code phrase (a line from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” followed by their real given names). Their mission was to sabotage crucial parts of the civil and military infrastructure as a precursor to a possible US/USSR active conflict or war.

I think ol’ Bob Frost was probably one of those secret agents as well. Just look at this video — something just doesn’t look quite right:

Joyce's Ulysses in manuscript and "womanuscript"

Happy Bloomsday, everybody. These two images nicely bookend the history of James Joyce’s great Ulysses from original manuscript to a womanuscript of Molly Bloom’s climax. Yes!

[Images via The Guardian and George Szirtes]

So to make all this cant even campier, let’s process our collective trauma over the Great Recession through the Sages of Grief in songs of “can’t”, leading off with an extra stage that sets-up our cultural addiction to the dream of spectacular profits:

1. Addiction — Show me the money!

You Can’t Resist It
Money Can’t Buy It
I Can’t Wait
I Can’t Decide
Can’t Say No
Can’t Stay Away
Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
Can’t Fight This Feeling
Can’t Slow Down
Just Can’t Get Enough
I Can’t Help Myself
I Can’t Quit You Baby
Can’t Live Without You
I Just Can’t Help Believing
I Just Can’t Wait to Be King

2. Shock and disbelief — Housing prices can’t go down!

I Can’t Be Bothered
Can’t Believe It
Can’t Take It In
Can’t Happen Here
I Can’t Tell You Why
I Can’t Explain

3. Denial — It’s just a blip on the way to greater market value.

It Can’t Rain All the Time
Can’t Stop Me
Can’t Tell Me Nothing
You Can’t Take Me
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
Rudie Can’t Fail
I Can’t Go For That
Can’t Give Up Now
You Can’t Catch Me
You Can’t Bring Me Down
They Can’t Take That Away From Me

4. Anger — Bernie Madoff did what with my pension?!!!

I Can’t Stand the Rain
Can’t Stand You
U Can’t Touch This
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
I Can’t Outrun You
You Can’t Win
Can’t Stand It
I Can’t Stand It No More

5. Bargaining — Mr. Banker, will you renegotiate my mortgage?

Why Can’t You See
I Can’t Do It Alone
Why Can’t I?

6. Depression — We’re fucked, and soon we’ll be living in mud huts again.

Can’t Get You out of My Head
Can’t Keep It In
Can’t Stand Losing You
Can’t Get Over You
Can’t Cry Anymore
Can’t Go Back
Can’t Go On
Can’t Get There From Here
Can’t Let Go
Can’t Shake It
Can’t Find the Words
Can’t Get It Out of My Head
Can’t Sleep At Night
Can’t Finish What You Started
Can’t Get Out of What I’m Into
I Can’t Do This
Can’t Stop This Thing We Started
Can’t Stop This
Can’t Go Back Now
Can’t Stop the World
Can’t Let Go
Can’t Get Away
A Fire I Can’t Put Out

7. Acceptance — I don’t really even need a house, now that I have an iPad!

This Can’t Be Healthy
Can’t Deny It
I Can’t Deny
Can’t Have It All
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
You Can’t Turn the Tide
You Can’t Stop the Rain
We Can’t Help You
Can’t Be A Cowboy Forever

Have you ever sent out a “tweet” on the popular Twitter social media service?  Congratulations: Your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.

That’s right.  Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions.

They go on to list some noteworthy tweets that may be worth remembering in ten thousand years and beyond:

Just a few examples of important tweets in the past few years include the first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (http://twitter.com/jack/status/20), President Obama’s tweet about winning the 2008 election (http://twitter.com/barackobama/status/992176676), and a set of two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed because of a series of events set into motion by his use of Twitter (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/786571964) and (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/787167620).

At the current rate of 50 million tweets per day, that’s 18,250,000,000 tweets per year, or 3,832,500,000,000 tweets every 210 years, the amount of time since the Library of Congress was founded in 1800. Of course, once everybody on the planet is tweeting hundreds of times per day, along with their household pets, appliances, and spambots, there could be 50 billion tweets per day. So attention LOC librarians: time to sharpen those pencils and roll up your sleeves — you’re about to get real busy chasing stray tweets.

Already by the time he moved to Menlo Park in 1876, Thomas Edison had gathered many of the men who would work with him for the rest of their lives. By the time Edison built his West Orange lab complex, men came from all over the US and Europe to work with the famous inventor. Often these young “muckers,” as Edison called them, were fresh out of college or technical training.

Unlike most inventors, Edison depended upon dozens of “muckers” to build and test his ideas. In return, they received “only workmen’s wages.” However, the inventor said, it was “not the money they want, but the chance for their ambition to work.”

The Wikipedia page for Thomas Edison notes several places and companies bearing Edison’s name:

• Edison General Electric, merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric
• Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon
• Consolidated Edison
• Edison International
  • Southern California Edison
  • Edison Mission Energy
  • Edison Capital
• Detroit Edison, a unit of DTE Energy
• Edison Sault Electric Company, a unit of Wisconsin Energy Corporation
• FirstEnergy
  • Metropolitan Edison
  • Ohio Edison
  • Toledo Edison
• Edison S.p.A., a unit of Italenergia
• Boston Edison, a unit of NSTAR, formerly known as the Edison Electric Illuminating Company
• WEEI radio station in Boston, established by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company (hence the call letters)

Though branding is now second-nature for famous people (and their handlers), Randall E. Stross author of The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World asserts that Edison launched the first successful branding campaign-an achievement arguably further ahead of its time than much of his technical output-by embracing the title “Wizard of Menlo Park,” which was coined by a reporter during Edison’s brief stay in that New Jersey town.

His name was Charles Ponzi, pictured at right, and Mental Floss notes,

Anyone can work a simple swindle, but you have to be a special kind of con man to have your name become synonymous with “fraud.”

Read the article, it’s a great story. At one point near the end, when his great con was unraveling, Ponzi hired a PR flak named William McMasters,

…but the PR man saw through Ponzi’s lies and renounced his client in the press. James Walsh reprints part of McMasters’ slam of Ponzi in his book, You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man. Of Ponzi, McMasters said, “The man is a financial idiot. He can hardly add…He sits with his feet on the desk smoking expensive cigars in a diamond holder and talking complete gibberish about postal coupons.”

Certainly an apt symbol of our own troubled, fraudulent times.

Strangely enough, Spotted Dick isn’t yet mentioned in the extensive list of misleading food names, although it has its own entry, on Wikipedia.

Here’s an interesting little article on the name, and a recipe in case you’d like to eat Spotted Dick in the privacy of your own home:

Spotted Dick, ever a favorite pudding through the years, has as much a spotted history as complexion. As for the name, it’s a case of the chicken and the egg. Known to have been served in Britain for over 200 years, this sweet cakey, currenty treat was a favorite of Captin Jack Aubrey, hero of the Patrick O’Brien novels. Legends trace it back to England, and even Ireland (where it is called Sweet Cake, Curnie Cake or Railway Cake). As old as Christmas Pudding, itself, one has to wonder, where did the name come from?

Is it, as someone has suggested, a derivation of Spotted Pudding? That theory holds that “Pudding” was shortened to “Puddink”, from there to “Puddick” and then just “Dick.” Other histories call it Spotted Dog, and while this may be editing on behalf of good taste, it makes sense.

Never had it myself, but there’s an authentic English pub in Toronto named The Spotted Dick and we ate there!

Infamously associated with da curse of the Billy Goat, the Billy Goat Tavern is famous now for bringing together some of the biggest names in the trademark lawyer game. Above are Ron Coleman, Marty Schwimmer and John Welch, who got together for a meetup with other trademark law bloggers this week in Chicago. Go Cubs!

Update: John Welch, who grew up in Chicago and is a died-in-the-wool White Sox fan, let us know through Marty Schwimmer that our apparent support for the Cubs really got his goat.

It has long been suspected that the Pentagon taps into Wordlab to find good names for military operations. Some of the potential names for military ops may have been compromised when they were posted on the Internet here.

Others claim that names for military operations are developed by language machines, like the American Military Operation Name Generating Device or the Military Codename Generator.

The best names, however, like Operation Mountain Thrust, can only be conceived by the human mind, and are kept top secret until the operations are underway and it is safe to issue a press release.

1886—Drink Coca-Cola
1893—The Ideal Brain Tonic
1904—Delicious and Refreshing
1905—Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains
1906—The Drink of Quality
1907—Cooling….Refreshing…Delicious
1908—Good To The Last Drop
1909—Drink Delicious Coca-Cola
1917—Three Million A Day
1922—Thirst Knows No Season
1924—Pause and Refresh Yourself
1927—Around the Corner From Anywhere
1929—The Pause That Refreshes
1930—Meet Me At The Soda Fountain
1932—Ice Cold Sunshine
1934—When It’s Hard To Get Started, Start With Coca-Cola
1935—All Trails Lead To Coca-Cola
1936—It’s The Refreshing Thing To Do
1938—The Best Friend Thirst Ever Had
1939—Whoever You Are, Whatever You Do, Wherever You May Be, When You Think of Refreshment Think of Ice Cold Coca-Cola
1939—Thirst Stops Here; Makes Travel More Pleasant
1939—Coca-Cola Goes Along
1941—Work Refreshed
1943—A Taste All It’s Own
1944—High Sign of Friendship
1945—Coke Means Coca-Cola
1946—Yes
1947—Relax With The Pause That Refreshes
1948—Where There’s Coke There’s Hospitality
1948—It’s The Real Thing! (First time this slogan was used.)
1950—Time Out For Coke
1950—Help Yourself to Refreshment
1951—Good Food And Coca-Cola Just Naturally Go Together
1952—Coke Follows Thirst Everywhere
1952—What You Want Is A Coke
1954—For People On The Go
1955—Americans Prefer Taste”
1956—Coca-Cola – Makes Good Things Taste Better
1957—Sign Of Good Taste
1957—There’s Nothing Like A Coke
1958—The Cold, Crisp Taste of Coke
1959—Be Really Refreshed
1962—Enjoy That Refreshing New Feeling
1963—Things Go Better With Coke
1970—It’s The Real Thing
1971—I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke
1975—Look Up America
1976—Coke Adds Life”
1979—Have a Coke and a Smile
1982—Coke Is It!
1985—We’ve Got A Taste For You
1986—Catch The Wave – Red White & You
1989—Can’t Beat The Feeling
1990—Can’t Beat The Real Thing
1993—Always Coca-Cola
1993—Taste It All
2000—Coca-Cola Enjoy
2001—Life Tastes Good
2002—All the world loves a Coke

“It’s the Real Thing” and “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” are two of the most memorable slogans that have helped to define the Coca-Cola brand.

“True Love and Apple Pie” was the title of the original version of the song released on the New Seekers album We’d Like To Teach The World To Sing after the commercial success of the advertising version, “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.” The song was made famous in 1971 by the outstanding Hilltop ad campaign for Coca-Cola in which children from around the world, dressed in ethnic costumes on a hilltop in Italy, sang:

I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love,

Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.

I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,

I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.

The Hilltop ad campaign is regarded as one of the greatest television advertisements of all time, and is one of the highlights of the 50 Years of Coca-Cola’s Television Advertisements recorded by the Library of Congress.

Earlier this year, Coca-Cola reprised the “Hilltop” theme with a controversial ad campaign code-named “Chlltop” for the introduction of a new diet soda named Coca-Cola Zero. The introduction of the new slogan this week coincides with the announcement of a new Coca-Cola drink combining regular Coke and coffee, named Coca-Cola Blak.

There’s also a short chronicle of the first century in Coca-Cola’s creative history at allaboutbranding that’s a good overview. And, Snopes has lots of Cokelore, aptly described as “a collection of Coke trivia and tall tales sure to refresh even the most informationally-parched reader.”

Dave Grohl, formally a drummer with the likes of Freak Baby, Mission Impossible, Fast, Dain Bramage, Scream and a little-known band called Nirvana, now fronts Foo Fighters. But what’s with the name?  The Jargon File entry continues:

<blockquote>
One place “foo” is known to have remained live is in the U.S. military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term ‘foo fighters’ was in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or spurious trace that would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced in popular American usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better grunge-rock bands). Because informants connected the term directly to the Smokey Stover strip, the folk etymology that connects it to French “feu” (fire) can be gently dismissed.
</blockquote>

For more on Foo and the Smokey Stover comic strip <a href=”http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/foo.html”>go here</a>. If this post has whet your curiosity and you’d like to know the origins and meanings behind other band names like Goo Goo Dolls and Pearl Jam, these are sticky questions and you’re on your own. This is a family program and we mean to keep our PG rating. Sort of.

But no, these are the Latin names of the seven deadly sins of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. The first letters of these words form the medieval Latin word saligia, from which the verb saligiare (to commit a deadly sin) is taken.

These are sometimes called capital sins, or cardinal sins. But a cardinal sin is not to be confused with a mortal sin, or with Cardinal Sin, as in Cardinal Sin to miss papal elections.

We also learned that Cardinal Sin was considered papabile.

Papabile (plural: Papabili) is an unofficial Italian term first coined by Vaticanologists and now used internationally in many languages to describe cardinals of whom it is thought likely or possible that they will be elected pope. A convenient English translation would be “popeable”, “one worthy of the position of pope” or “possible (or likely) successor to the pope”.

Cardinal Sin could have chosen the name Pope Saligia, if elected.

Oh, by the way, I’m “guest blogging” over with the lawyers again today if you want to read a serious post about Cardinal Law and the Benefit of Clergy.

James Bond was an American Ornithologist (someone who studies birds) who wrote the classic field identification book “The Birds of the West Indies”. When Ian Fleming wrote “Casino Royale” in 1952 at his home in Jamaica he needed a name for his fictitious spy and, seeing Bond’s book in his library, decided to “borrow” the author’s name.

“I was determined that my secret agent should be as anonymous a personality as possible,” said Fleming. “It struck me that his [Bond’s] name, brief, unromantic and yet very masculine, was just what I needed.”

Bond’s book is still in print and, despite being originally written in 1936, is still the only definitive bird identification book covering all the birds of the West Indies.

Those 1950s West Indian birds have by now spawned a franchise that more than any other has assembled a roster of great character names. Here are some selected favorites:

The name, the original graphics, the mascot, the product, the ad campaigns and the tagline have made an impression so lasting, that obsessed Dew fan chroniclers make Coca Cola collecting compulsives look slack by comparison. Today we honor that obsession by presenting, almost in its entirety and with added graphic, the following explanation from mountaindewbottles.com:

What is Mountain Dew? Is it the bottle or the drink inside the bottle? Who invented this popular drink and when?

In the early 1940′s, two brothers, Ally and Barney Hartman, were bottling a lithiated-lemon (“7-up” flavor) drink as a personal mixer for hard-liquor. They jokingly called the drink “Mountain Dew” after Tennessee Mountain Moonshine.

In 1946, as a continuation of the joke, Barney and Ally added a paper label (misspelled by the artist) to their mixer showing a hillbilly with a gun and a “by BARNEY and OLLIE” inscription. The bottle was taken to a convention in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and their friends convinced them that this was a marketable drink.

On November 12, 1948 the Hartman Brothers filed for and received a trademark on the now famous label – a professional redraw of the 1946 paper label. The flavor was still the 7-up type flavor originated by them in the 1940′s.

In 1951, Ally ordered the first ACL Mountain Dew bottle. The bottle was green glass with white paint (no red) showing a hillbilly shooting at a revenuer running from an outhouse. The bottle read “by BARNEY and ALLY”. Interestingly, when the bottles arrived they were put in a warehouse and not used till 1955.

In 1954, Charlie Gordon decided that Tri-City Beverage need to add a new flavored drink and contacted his old friend, Ally Hartman. Ally sold Charlie the very first franchise for Mountain Dew and Charlie became the first bottler to commercially sell Mountain Dew (remember, Ally had put his bottles into storage). The very first commercially available ACL Mountain Dew bottle was the “by CHARLIE – JIM and BILL” bottle. Charlie had his concentrate formulated at the Tip Corporation in Marion, VA.

In 1955, based on Tri-City Beverage’s success, Hartman Beverage pulled their bottles out of the warehouse and started bottling Mountain Dew commercially. Bill Kibler left Tri-City Beverage that year which left Charlie and his plant manager, Jim Archer. They produced another run of bottles that said “by CHARLIE and JIM”.

Also in 1955, two other brothers, RB (Richard or Dick) and Herman Minges worked out a deal with Ally Hartman and started bottling Mountain Dew at their Fayetteville, NC Pepsi plant. Along with their other brother Dean, the first Minges bottle (the fourth ACL Mountain Dew bottle) was produced under the “by DEAN and DICK” label.

In 1957, Herman left the Fayetteville Pepsi Plant to start a new Pepsi plant in Lumberton, NC with his father LL Minges. They put out the fifth Mountain Dew Bottle – “by HERMAN & L.L.”.

In August of 1957, the Tip Corporation was purchased by five men: Bill Jones (it’s current President), Ally Hartman, RB Minges, Herman Minges and Wythe Hull. Wythe was a Marion, Virginia Pepsi bottler, but he never produced Mountain Dew since Charlie Gordon had that territories franchise.

On November 30th, 1957 Ally Hartman sold Mountain Dew to the Tip Corporation.

In 1959 Bill Bridgforth became the plant manager of Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City, Tennessee and worked with Bill Jones to develop a lemonade flavored drink called Tri-City Lemonade. The concentrate is produced by the Tip Corporation.

In 1960, Bill Bridgforth moved his Tri-City Lemonade flavor into the Mountain Dew Bottle which replacing [sic] the 7-up flavor. This new lemonade flavor is the flavor that is bottled as Mountain Dew today.

In 1962, Herman Minges also moves the Tri-City Lemonade flavor into his Mountain Dew Bottles to compete against a drink called SunDrop Cola.

On May 29th 1962 Tip grants it’s first franchise to Pepsi-Cola Bottling of Kinston, NC. Kinston orders the “by HOYT MINGES” bottle.

On September 2nd 1964 Pepsi purchases the Tip Corporation and as such the Mountain Dew Flavor.

In 1965, Pepsi announces the “Yahoo Mountain Dew…It’ll tickle your innards” campaign. The Mountain Dew bottle is redesigned, Willy the hillbilly (named after Willy Mcfalls) is redesigned and names are no longer allowed on the bottles. Up until this point about 174 different named bottles had been produced. However, many named bottles were still produced after 1965. Refer to the complete history for details.

For those of you still thirsting for more, we found a different site that features The Master List of Named Mountain Dew Bottles. Whew! Fortunately, far less is known about the 7-Up name. From infoplease.com:

The popular lemon-lime flavored soft drink was created by Charles Leiper Grigg in 1929.

His fist name for the new soda was “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.” That became “7-Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime,” before Grigg settled on simply “7-Up.”

According to the official web site of 7-Up, which has been a product of the Cadbury Schweppes Company since 1995, there are several theories about how Grigg came up with the unusual name.

Here are the most plausible stories.

1. He named it after a cattle brand he saw that looked like a “7 Up.”
2. He thought of it while rooting for sevens during a game of craps.
3. 7-Up has seven ingredients.
4. The words “seven up” have seven letters.
5. The original 7-Up bottle held seven ounces.

And lastly but thankfully, nothing is known of the origins of the name Orange Crush. A truly wonderful name that became a slang term for an infamous defoliant used in the Vietnam War, a nickname for the Denver Bronco’s defense, a song and, sadly, a mixed drink that contains no Orange Crush but rather Vodka, Triple Sec, Orange Juice and yes, 7up. But the pictures sure are pretty.

Ahhh… drink up!