Jalapeno

The Jalapeno is a high-damage explosive that can clear an entire lane of zombies, melt Zomboni's ice and melt Dr. Zomboss's ice balls.
Its shape and name are based on the chili pepper, valued for its spicy flavor.

The Jalapeno's name is misspelled in the game; the correct spelling is Jalapeño, and because of this, the Jalapeno should be pronounced Hal-A-Peen-O as opposed to the correct Hal-A-Peen-Yo.

Jalapeno's Right eye twitches

It seems that the Jalapeno is actually sweating. This may be due to that it is hot as it is a chili, or it may just be reflections from the sun. It may also be since he is nervous about the explosion and trying not to detonate at the same time.

The Jalapeno plant in real life is not actually the hottest chili pepper. In fact, the hottest pepper, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Pepper is the hottest, which is 1,463,700 on the Scoville scale!

The flaming effect is, assumably, due to the spiciness of a chili when eaten.

The row of flames seems to distinguish from the left.

If you look closely, Jalapeno has green pupils.

Jalapeno can melt a frozen Gargantuar, Giga-Gargantuar or Dr. Zomboss.

The Jalapeno, Peashooter and Ice-shroom are the only plants whose names were spelled uncapitalized in one entry of the Suburban Almanac.

On the iPhone/iPod Touch version, there is an achievement called Chilli Free, where the player is not permitted to use Jalapenos in Column Like You See 'Em.

A Jalapeno can clear a lane of daisies made by killed zombies (if 'daisies' was typed).

In the Suburban Almanac, the Jalapeno is shaking fast while in the Zen Garden it shakes slow.
But however in the iPhone Version in Zen Garden, it shakes faster.

If a Jalapeno or other explosive plant is used to destroy a zombie in ZomBotany, it will turn the zombie black, but it won't fall into ashes.

The Chili Pepper T-Shirt was available in the Xbox Live Marketplace. It costs 80 Microsoft Points. It was a white T-Shirt with a picture of the Jalapeno on it.

In real life Jalapenos are normally green.

Jalapenos can also be extremely useful in Survival: Endless, to destroy Giga-Gargantuar and Gargantuar.

Jalapeno seems to have the most stress on handling the power setting off of all exploding plants.

Jalapeno's eyes are different from it's eyes in the almanac when detonating.

Jalapeno acts as an extra lawnmower.

The jalapeno will close one eye while exploding.

Melon-pult

The Melon-pult is a plant that lobs watermelons at incoming hordes of zombies. The melons smash on impact, causing damage to zombies within one square in any direction. Since its melons do 4 times the damage of a pea, and it shoots 1/2 times of a Peashooter, the Melon-pult has the same damage rate of a Repeater, but has a wider target and be used on Roof levels. Melon-pults also cost less than four Peashooters. The Melon-pult can fire over the shields of Ladder Zombie, Screen Door Zombie, and Trash Can Zombie.
Both the Melon-pult's shape and projectile are based on Citrullus lanatus, the common watermelon. This is the last plant you gain in Adventure Mode before the final stage.

Melon-pults can hit Newspaper Zombies, Screen Door Zombies, and Ladder Zombies over their shields, and Snorkel Zombies while they're underwater (like all lobbed shot plants). When you are planning to use catapults, you might want to start with a cheap lobbed shot plant, and replace it with the Melon-pult later. It is quite useful on the roof, as well, since it (like the other lobbed shot plants) can shoot over the angle of the roof, in addition to being the strongest catapult plant not obtained from Crazy Dave. You should also considerupgrading it to a Winter Melon later, if possible, as all the zombies in range will also be slowed down. Also, supporting Melon-pults with Kernel-pults is very effective, as you can temporarily paralyze zombies with its butter attack while melons smack them in the face plus additional area-of-effect damage.
Comparing two Melon-pults to a Gatling Pea and a Torchwood: A Melon-pult does only four peas of damage per second. Considering its splash damage, which is two peas per second in ideal conditions, its average damage per second per row would be, given a zombie density of one per square, 7. With a lower zombie density, this is much lower. A Gatling Pea and a Torchwood would do eight peas of damage per second, given a zombie density of 1 per square (and an extra four peas for each zombie on that square) while taking up the same space on the field. Also, the Gatling Pea and Torchwood combination (with the Repeater) takes up three slots in the seed tray. Given one zombie, three melons to die the two Melon-pults will do a meager four peas per second, and the Gatling Pea and Torchwood still does 8 peas per second. Once upgraded to winter melon, it is almost unbeatable.

Dancing Zombies

Dancing Zombies are Zombies that moonwalk across your lawn, summoning 4 Backup Dancers and may look similar to Michael Jackson, depending on the game version. It Is the 9th Zombie encountered in Adventure Mode. There is now a new Dancing Zombie with new Backup Dancers.

The Dancing Zombie dances onto the lawn and summons four Backup Dancers, which appears somewhat like a straight cross. These five zombies will dance at the same rate, and will stop moving if one of them has to stop or is slowed down through freezing. If one or more Backup Dancers die, and the Dancing Zombie is still alive, it summons Backup Dancers until it dies.
Note: The newer version of Dancing Zombie is slightly stronger. The older Dancing Zombie always summons Backup Dancers on the second column from the right, while the newer version of the Dancing Zombie summons them on the first column. The newer Dancing Zombie also eats faster than the older one.

Absorbs 17 normal damage shots. Appearance changes upon absorption of 9 normal damage shots.

Torchwood

The Torchwood lights regular peas on fire when they pass through its flame, adding extra damage and an additional attack to enemies that are near. When planted during the Fog levels, it clears the fog around it for approximately one-and-a-quarter squares. The only other plant that can eliminate fog until eaten is the Plantern.
Although there is a flowering plant family known as Torchwood (Burseraceae), which includes frankincense and myrrh, the name may also be a reference to the eponymous organization in the Doctor Who spin-off series.

Place Torchwoods in any lane in front of any plant that shoots peas to turn the peas into flaming projectiles that do double the normal damage. It also adds splash damage which deals a normal pea's damage to all nearby zombies. However, if a frozen pea passes through it, it will melt, becoming a normal pea that does normal damage. Any zombie with a shield will prevent the splash effect. A flaming pea also defrosts zombies, so using them in combination with Ice-shrooms, Winter melons and Snow peas is not reccommended.

Forsythe "Jughead" Pendleton Jones III

Jughead Jones is a fictional character in Archie Comics who first appeared in the comic in December 1941. He is the son of Forsythe II; although in one of the early Archie newspaper comic strips, he himself is identified as Forsythe Van Jones II. He has a white sheepdog named Hot Dog and a younger sister, Forsythia "Jellybean" Jones.
Jughead (sometimes shortened to Jug or Juggie) is the best friend of Archie Andrews. He is seen as lazy, obsessed with food, and generally uninterested in girls. He stands at 6 ft (1.8 m) and 140 lbs (64 kg) and can be identified by his long nose, half-closed eyes, "S" sweatshirt, and crown-like button beanie hat. His name in the Spanish version of the comic is Torombolo.

Jughead generally has a characteristic wry and sarcastic sense of humor. He is considered a bit of an oddity, but prefers his nonconformism as opposed to going along with others styles. His many quirks make him the butt of teasing and abuse from Reggie, Veronica, and even other classmates and teachers. Many episodes involve Reggie and Jughead trying to outdo one another with pranks and bets, and Jughead almost always comes out the victor. He is revealed to be extremely clever and creative when necessary and he often takes advantage of Reggie's and his other tormentors' weaknesses (and has fun all the while).
In the earlier comics, a running gag involved various characters trying to discover Jughead's real name, while Jughead thwarted their efforts. In one story, Archie Andrews and Reggie Mantle go to the school office, where a woman tells them that Jughead's real first name is Steve. After Archie and Reggie leave the office, the audience learns that the woman is actually Jughead's aunt who has just lied as a favor to Jughead to help keep his real first name (Forsythe) hidden. He is named after his ancestor who is an American hero. For a brief time, Jughead started to use his given name in honor of his ancestor. After learning that this ancestor was married nine times, Jughead reverted to his nickname.
Another mystery that follows Jughead's character is the meaning of the "S" on his sweatshirt. This remains a mystery to this day, although many stories have come close to revealing it. Recently, the triangular banner on the cover of issue 140 of Archie & Friends shows that the "S" stands for Silby, as in Silby high school.

Jughead is almost always seen wearing his trademark crown hat. This type of crown-shaped cap often puzzles modern readers, but caps like this were popular among boys in the 1930s and 1940s. It was made from a man's felt fedora hat with the brim trimmed in a zig-zag and turned up. In the 1920s and 1930s, such caps usually indicated the wearer was a mechanic. Similar caps appeared on The Andy Griffith Show and in Death Wish. Jughead's hat was recolored in black in the Filmation cartoons and pink in The New Archies.
Though some view the hat as strange and immature, Jughead considers it a good luck charm and when it is taken from him, misfortune comes his way. While on the school baseball team, Jughead was pulled aside and reprimanded by school principal Mr. Weatherbee for wearing the hat instead of a proper baseball uniform cap. Jughead complied, but then started performing so badly that Weatherbee was forced to relent.
In the "Time Police" comic, his beanie is a device that allows him to travel in time.

Terrell Davis

Terrell Lamar Davis (born October 28, 1972) is a former American football running back who played for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League from 1995 to 2001. Davis was drafted by the Broncos in the sixth round (196th pick overall) of the 1995 NFL Draft. Davis is the Denver Broncos all-time leading rusher, with 7,607 rushing yards. As a player, he was given the nickname "T. D." by players, fans and the media; this denoted both the initials of his first and last name as well as being an abbreviation for touchdown.

Davis appeared on Sesame Street in a skit with Elmo and a talking football. Elmo called Davis "the man" and Davis responded, "Thank you, thank you. I try!" The episode was filmed in December 1998 in New York, and Davis said on the episode of America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions profiling the 1998 Broncos that he was originally supposed to film the episode the day after Denver's Week 15 matchup with the New York Giants which was played in Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The plan was for Davis to stay behind in New York for the day while the rest of the team flew home, assuming that the Broncos would win. However, because the Giants defeated the Broncos, Davis had to return to Denver for a Monday practice/film session with the team and then fly back to New York the next day to film his parts.
Davis guest-starred on Disney Channel's The Jersey, in an episode called "They Say It's Your Birthday" along with other sports stars Shannon Sharpe, Tim Brown, Hardy Nickerson and Tony Siragusa. The episode originally aired on October 21, 2000.
Davis appeared on an episode of Sister, Sister at the twins' graduation to give a speech.
Post retirement, Davis worked for NFL Network as a correspondent and studio host for NFL Total Access. Davis also served as a color commentator for some NFL Europe games covered by NFL Network.
Davis appeared on the August 29, 2008 episode of The Colbert Report to analyze the acceptance speech given by U.S. Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama at Invesco Field at Mile High a day earlier.

Lady Vic

Lady Elaine Marsh-Morton, a.k.a. “Lady Vic” is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. She is an English noblewoman who works secretly as an assassin, bounty hunter, and mercenary. She is employed on a semi-regular basis by Roland Desmond, a.k.a. Blockbuster, and appears most frequently as an antagonist of Nightwing (Dick Grayson).
Her sobriquet “Lady Vic” is short for "Lady Victim," referring to any of her possible targets.

Lady Elaine is descended from a long line of British soldiers and mercenaries, and a genuine English aristocrat. The money she earns from her secret career helps prevent foreclosure on her impoverished family estate.
She completes an assignment for Blüdhaven gang boss Antonio “Angel” Marin[1] and returns to Blüdhaven to collect her fee, and is upset to find Marin missing. She tracks down Marin’s lawyer, and threatened to kill his young daughter if she wasn’t paid – a threat she definitely would have carried out, if Nightwing had not intervened. Dudley Soames informs her that Marin had been replaced by Blockbuster, and offers to pay her fee, with a retainer to continue working for him.
Elaine is one of Blockbuster’s hirelings tasked with tracking down Oracle. When Blockbuster was dying of heart failure, Elaine is entrusted with locating Gorilla City in Africa, and finding a replacement heart.
Lady Vic is sent to eliminate Tarantula, Blockbuster's latest ally, when Tarantula had disobeyed his orders. Tarantula defeats Lady Vic, shooting her in the stomach.

Elaine is a highly skilled martial artist and athlete, and equally skilled with firearms. She has a sentimental preference for a collection of antique weapons handed down by her ancestors, souvenirs of their colonial exploits: a matched pair of Katara (कटार), a Japanese katana, a Thuggee strangling cloth, a Maasai javelin, and a Webley revolver.
Of the mercenaries regularly employed by Blockbuster, Elaine is one of the most skilled, certainly more skilled than Brutale, Stallion, or Electrocutioner, though not on the level of opponents such as Nightwing or Batman. When Blockbuster decided to test Shrike’s abilities by pitting him against all of his regular assassins at once, Elaine lasted the longest, and was the only one to actually inflict a wound on him before being knocked out.
Lady Vic also has qualities of determination and ruthlessness that set her apart from the others. Possibly this is because she desperately needs the money she earns, for the sake of her family’s continued standing and honor. As mentioned above, she was more than willing to kill a young girl to get paid; during the Hunt for Oracle storyline, when Black Canary escaped from a plane in which she was being held prisoner, Lady Vic astonished her by leaping into the sky after her, without a parachute.

Kole Weathers (New Earth)

Professor Abel Weathers, paranoid of an impending nuclear holocaust, was attempting to find a way for humanity to survive the fallout through forced evolution. One of the test subjects in his experiments was his sixteen-year-old daughter, Kole, whom he grafted with Promethium. However, instead of evolving, she found herself with the ability to create and control silicon crystal.
Kole was then kidnapped by the mad sun Titaness, Thia. For two years, Thia forced Kole to use her powers to construct a crystal prison in which Thia can hold important prisoners. Thia eventually came into conflict with the Teen Titans... which ultimately lead to the death of the goddess and Kole winning her freedom. Lilith, a member of the Titans who has the power to tell the future, sensed the "dark clouds of destruction" around Kole and warned her that she would face a "grim future" should she return to Earth and invited her to remain in Mount Olympus. Kole declined, electing to reclaim her life on Earth.

Now back on earth, Kole tried to reunite with her parents, only to find that her father's experiments had produced a house full of crystalline and insectoid monstrosities. When the Titans came to confront him, he had them captured and attempted to subject them with the same experiments. Kole helped them to escape, and in the ensuing conflict, Abel and his wife Marilyn transformed themselves into insects and caused the lab to self-destruct. Having nowhere else to go, Kole chose to go with the Titans to New York City, though she never officially joined (this fact seems to be contradicted in other later sources such as The Secret Origins of the Teen Titans in which Dick Grayson lamented how Kole was a "Titan for such a short time").

Kole was apparently killed during the Crisis on Infinite Earths by the Anti-Monitor's shadow demons while trying to protect Earth-Two's Robin and the Huntress. Note: The Crisis of Infinite Earths rewrote the origins of Donna Troy, in which Thia and her fellow Titans of Myth played a major role, which means Thia never kidnapped Kole and thus how Kole met the Titans has been nullified. There has yet to be an updated origin for Kole.

After her seeming death, Kole mysteriously resurfaced a few years later, where she assisted the Team Titans against a pack of vampires. Her powers had somehow been upgraded with the ability to teleport from place to place at will and sense events happening miles away. She also hinted that she isn't anything "alive". After helping the Team Titans in several battles, Kole vanished again. It was later suggested that this was not in fact the real Kole, but a puppet created by Monarch. However, when an organization called The 1000 did a data search on all the Titans, living and dead, Kole's file read "Data Inconclusive", which added some doubt to her final fate.

Kole's death was confirmed however, only a few years later. The teen successor to the line of Brother Blood created a team of zombie combatants made up of the resurrected deceased members of the Titans. Among those within Blood's ranks was Kole. When Blood's control over these undead Titans was broken by Kid Eternity (whose powers Blood had tapped to bring them "back to life"), they seemed to simultaneously decompose and vanish as they were returned to the afterlife.

Furthermore, Kole has a statue in the "hall of fallen Titans" at Titans Tower, alongside the original Hawk and Dove, the original Aquagirl and others.

Kole makes a brief cameo in Teen Titans #68 when Kid Eternity summons her spirit to use her crystals to open the door to the Hall of Records in Hell to examine the terms of Kid Devil's pact with Neron.

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What you are about to read you won’t find on any official Coca-Cola history site because the corporation would rather keep these facts buried and forgotten about.

The soda giant Coca-Cola has been a favorite drink for millions of people all over the world for the last 100+ years. Through out the years the company has tried everything under the sun to sell their products to whomever they could which has brought a lot of controversy on to them.

In the past 100 years the company has been in trouble with racism, child labor, water depletion and much more. I was truly speechless after some of the facts I heard about and you might be to. So if you got an interest in Coca-Cola then this might be for you!

Inventor of Coca-Cola

As many people know, Coca-Cola was established in May 1886 by doctor/pharmacist John Pemerton as a nerve tonic. What you probably didn’t know was that Dr. Pemerton was considered a junkie who was addicted to morphine big time. John died only 2 and half years after establishing the soft drink and trademark.


Cocaine in Coca-Cola

Now it’s no big surprise to most people that Coca-Cola’s main addictive ingredient was cocaine. About 60mg of the drug was used in each serving of Coke until 1903 when they company claimed to have removed the ingredient. Funny thing about it is Coca-Cola still uses and imports coca leaves which are pretty much the main ingredient in the production of cocaine. Also some officials for Coke claimed that the use of cocaine in the soft drink was always a rumor.

Slogans

Up till the early to late fifties Coca-Cola was believed to have healing properties and with that some pretty unique slogans started to appear on the products. Some you might have heard, others might be totally new to you.
1886 “Coca-Cola Delicious, Refreshing, Exhilarating” No doubt it was exhilarating when they were using cocaine as an additive.
1900 “For Headache & Exhaustion, Drink Coca-Cola” Again I don’t know what cocaine would do for a headache but there’s no doubt the drug takes away exhaustion.
1905 “Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains”

Coca-Cola & the Nazi’s

Now as we all know Coca-Cola is an American made soda drink so when I was researching Nazi history for another article, I was totally surprised in what I found. In 1936, Coca-cola sponsored the Berlin Olympics also known as the “Nazi Olympics”. While Britain was at war with Germany the company continued to do business behind enemy lines and advertised beside the Nazi Regime. As America enter the Second World War, German Coca-Cola bottling plants could no longer get the sugar/syrup to make the drink so they invented another drink for the Nazi public called “Fanta”.
Coca-Cola and the Civil Rights Movement

Now again when I came across this fact it blew me away. A day before Martin Luther King was assassinated he held a speech asking the people to boycott Coca-Cola and stop buying their products because of the way the black workers were being treated. Supposedly white workers where getting paid a much higher wage for little work where as the African Americans where expected to do long hours and back breaking work for little pay and no chance of advancement within the ranks of the company.

Human Rights Violations and Murder in Colombia

1n the early 2000’s, Colombia Coca-Cola bottle workers that were with the union started receiving death threats to leave the union, and if they didn‘t comply then they would be killed. Shortly after the message workers started turning up dead.
In 2004, a New York City councilor took a fact finding delegation to Colombia. Once there the councilor found that the Coca-Cola workers were the victims of at least 179 major human rights violations and 9 murders.
Then in Jan 2007 a group known as the “Black Eagles” went on TV to tell the Colombian public if union workers and other didn’t stop basically complaining about Coca-Cola’s work ethics then they would be killed.
Coca-Cola was being blamed for not providing a safe work place and for not taking responsibility for their actions which caused or allowed murders on their properties. Some Colombia officials go on to say or imply Coca-Cola is in someway responsible for these murders of union workers or allowed them to happen which they totally deny.

Biggest Racial Discrimination Payout

In only seems fair after all the stories about racial discrimination that finally in 2000 after investigations into the allegations the federal government found Coca-Cola guilty of the charges and ordered them to pay the biggest racial discrimination payout in history. Coca-Cola had to pay various victims restitution which added up to nearly $200 million. If you ask me that’s nothing compared to what they should pay for the decades of abuse against their workers.

Coca-Cola & Coca Leaves

Although Coca-Cola is suppose to contain no trace of cocaine like officials say, one of the main ingredients is the coca leave which is the main key to making cocaine. It’s a known fact that 8 tons of coca leaves are imported from South America each year by Coca-Cola and if any other regular citizen brought any of this into the states then chances are they would be arrested for drug trafficking.
Coca-Cola’s War on Water

I have read some wild stuff about this company but this one I just couldn‘t believe.
Years back Coca-Cola launched what some people call a “War” against water called “Just say no to H2O”. What this basically consisted of was the Coca-Cola Company offered its various suppliers like restaurants and so on incentives to push their products on customers when they ordered the free tap water. People eventually found a link on the internet and started sharing it which soon caused the “War” to end.

Coca-Cola & Water Depletion in India

Finally, this one had to be the biggest surprise to me. It takes 2 liters of water to make just 1 liter of Coke. In 2004, farmers in India held protests because Coca-Cola bottling plants where basically bleeding the water wells dry. It got so bad that Coke had to start shipping in water to many off its plants in 3rd world countries.
Over 290 billion liters of water are used every year by Coca-Cola around the globe and shows no signs of slowing down. As people in 3rd world countries continue to die because of a lack of clean water, Coca-Cola’s pockets just keep getting bigger and bigger at the expensive of innocent people.
If your interested in knowing the whole dark history about America’s most popular soft drink then you got to check out the Unofficial Coca-Cola History website at: http://www.naturalnews.com/003228.html and you will be surprised in what you see and read.

Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/128517_10-crazy-facts-about-coca-cola-you-did-not-know#ixzz1i71vWQL1

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Coke Facts:
1. In many states (in the USA) the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the truck to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.
2. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it will be gone in 2 days.
3. To clean a lavatory: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the lavatory bowl and
let the "real thing" sit for one hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in the coke removes stains from vitreous China.
4. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a
crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.
5. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola
over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.
6. To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the
rusted bolt for several minutes.
7. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan, wrap
the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for
sumptuous brown gravy.
8. To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of coke into a load of
greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The
Coke will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from
your windshield.

FYI:
1. The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its pH is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days. Phosphoric acid also bleaches calcium from bones and is a major contributor to the rising increase in osteoporosis.
2. To carry concentrated Coke syrup, the commercial truck must use the hazardous material place cards reserved for highly corrosive materials.
3. The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years.

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Cola beverages (and other soft drinks) taste better when made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. Coca Cola is now using sugarcane - but not in Coca Cola. The sugarcane is being used in a process to make plastic Coke bottles that are 70% petroleum based and 30% sugar cane based. (2010)

Coca Cola was invented by Dr. John S. Pemberton in 1886. It was originally formulated with extracts of coca leaves and kola nuts. That's where the name comes from.

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In Brazil, some misguided people vow that it increases sexual prowess, others are under the delusion that it makes a man impotent. In Haiti, they say it is the only thing that will cause Damballah and his wife Ayida Oueddo, a pair of the chief deities of the voodoo pantheon, to put in an appearance at a voodoo session. Chinese bankers have taken to serving it instead of tea, and Italian aristocrats offer it to their guests instead of champagne. Graceful gondolas carry it along the narrow canals of Venice, and sturdy, resigned burros tote it into the dusty Mexican hills. Bright red signs proclaim its worth in the shadow of the Matterhorn and beneath the blank, unastonished eyes of the great Sphinx. The gentle burps which it evokes from the drinker are heard amid the bustle of Parisian sidewalk cafes and amid the tinkling of Siamese temple bells.
People almost everywhere are buying it as if it were the biggest glass of ambrosia in the world for a nickel. Actually, according to the official and modest definition of its makers, it is only "a soft drink . . . best described as delicious and refreshing." Its name, of course, is Coca-Cola.
The Essence of America. The late William Allen White once described Coke as the "sublimated essence of all America stands for." To find something as thoroughly native American hawked in half a hundred languages on all the world's crossroads from Arequipa to Zwolle is still strangely anomalous, somewhat like reading Dick Tracy in French or seeing a Japanese actor made up to look like Abraham Lincoln. But it is reassuring. It is also simpler, sharper evidence than the Marshall Plan or a Voice of America broadcast that the U.S. has gone out into the world to stay.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820569,00.html#ixzz1aO2466r6

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A little about Coca-Cola and Coca leaves (cocaine)
Remember, Coca-Cola was originally marketed for its medicinal qualities.

This was a period of time when many patent medicines contained coca leaves or cocaine (an alkaloid extracted from the leaves), the most popular was 'Vin Mariani', invented by an Italian physician working in France, Angelo Mariani. Vin Mariani was widely imitated, and Pemberton at first produced an imitation of Vin Mariani before formulating his own concoction, Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola never contained much cocaine - and the amount was quickly reduced to almost undetectable amounts after a few years, when cocaine's negative properties started to become evident. (Estimates are the syrup contained 1 part in 50 million - that would be about 1/2 ounce in 25 million gallons of Coca Cola).

Since 1929 there has been no cocaine in Coca Cola. The leaves were still used for flavor, but the alkaloids were completely removed.

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Haddon Hubbard "Sunny" Sundblom (June 22, 1899 – March 10, 1976) was an artist best known for the images of Santa Claus he created for The Coca-Cola Company.
Sundblom was born in Muskegon, Michigan to a Swedish-speaking family. His father, Karl Wilhelm Sundblom, came from the farm Norrgårds in the village of Sonboda in Föglö of the Swedish-speaking Åland Islands, then part of the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland now Finland, and his mother Karin Andersson was from Sweden. Sundblom studied at the American Academy of Art.
Sundblom is best remembered for his advertising work, specifically the Santa Claus advertisements he painted for The Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. Sundblom's Claus firmly established the larger-than-life, grandfatherly Claus as a key figure in Christmas imagery. So popular were Sundblom's images of Claus (Sundblom's images are used by Coca-Cola to this day) that the urban legend soon arose that Sundblom had actually created the modern image of Santa Claus.
According to the Coca Cola company: "For inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly called "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). Moore's description of St. Nick led to an image of Santa that was warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and human. For the next 33 years, Sundblom painted portraits of Santa that helped to create the modern image of Santa -- an interpretation that today lives on in the minds of people of all ages, all over the world."
Sundblom also conceived Coke's mascot Sprite Boy who appeared in print ads during the 1940s and 1950s.
Sundblom is recognized as a major influence on many well known pin-up artists, such as Gil Elvgren, Joyce Ballantyne, Art Frahm, and Harry Ekman. In the mid-1930s, he began to paint pin-ups and glamour pieces for calendars. Sundblom's last assignment, in 1972, was a cover painting for Playboy's Christmas issue.
"Sundblom gets pigeonholed as the painter of Coca-Cola Santa Clauses, but this trivializes his central place in 20th century advertising art. More than any artist including Norman Rockwell, Sundblom defined the American Dream in pictures, proved by his work for virtually the entire Fortune 500. [Among his still-living legacy is the Quaker Oats man, posed by his assistant Harold W. McCauley.]"

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Coke Trivia:

1. A Mexico City bottler produces more Coca-Cola than anyone, anywhere.

2. More than 5 billion bottles of Coke were consumed by military personnel during WWII. (At the start of the war, the sugar used in the syrup for civilian consumption was restricted down to 50% due to rationing. This lasted through Aug. 1947.)

3. Coca-Cola has been associated with the Olympic Games since the summer of 1928.
In the 1880s, Coca-Cola’s original formula was sold as a medicine for headaches and other ills, and did actually contain traces of cocaine. By 1903 the drug was so controversial that the company starting using only “spent coca leaves” and stopped advertising Coke as a cure for ails.

4. By the 1950s, service stations were selling more Coca-Cola than motor oil.

6. The first batch of Coca-Cola was mixed in a 30 gallon brass kettle hung over the backyard fire of “Dr.” John Pemberton.