On August 10, 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring
Patrick Swayze, opened in theaters as the first movie to be
released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system,
had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same
year.
Versatile, inexpensive and relatively easy to play, the acoustic
guitar was a staple of American rural music in the early 20th
century, particularly black rural music such as the blues. But
a significant physical limitation made it a poor fit in ensembles
made up of brass, woodwind and orchestral string instruments:
The acoustic guitar was simply too quiet.
What transformed the guitar and its place in popular music, and eventually transformed popular music itself, was the development
of a method for transforming the sound of a vibrating guitar string
into an electrical signal that could be amplified and re-converted
into audible sound at a much greater volume.
The electric guitar—the instrument that revolutionized jazz, blues
and country music and made the later rise of rock and roll possible,
was recognized by the United States Patent Office on August 10,
1937 with the award of Patent #2,089.171 to G.D. Beauchamp for an instrument known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.
Inventor G.D. Beauchamp, partner with Adolph Rickenbacher in the Electro String Instrument Corporation of Los Angeles, California,
spent more than five years pursuing his patent on the Frying Pan.
7 Up was created by Charles Leiper Grigg, who launched his St.
Louis–based company The Howdy Corporation in 1920. Grigg
came up with the formula for a lemon-lime soft drink in 1929.
The product, originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime
Soda", was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of
1929. It contained lithium citrate, a mood-stabilizing drug, until
1948. It was one of a number of patent medicine products popular
in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Its name was later
shortened to "7 Up Lithiated Lemon Soda" before being further shortened to just "7 Up" by 1936.
Charles Leiper Grigg
(May 11, 1868 – April 16, 1940)
Glass bottle with paper label (1930’s)
