Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

The strange story behind President Jimmy Carter's brother's 'Billy Beer'

During Carter's 1976 presidential campaign, his brother, Billy Carter, became a sideshow attraction as a country bumpkin. The Louisville-based Falls City Brewing Company decided to capitalize on the attention and hired Carter has a brand ambassador to promote his own "Billy Beer." What followed was a strange, suspicious bit of guerilla marketing and hucksterism, all of it documented in this Mental Floss retrospective.

Why the craft beer industry is in decline

The trend began in 2024, when more craft breweries closed than opened, and has continued since then. Some blame the rise of canned cocktails, hard seltzers, and non-alcoholic beers, while others point to declining drinking rates for Gen Z.

Check out George Washington's beer recipe

The first American president's journal includes a recipe for "small beer," a low-alcohol beverage that was a cleaner (and slightly inebriating) alternative to the potentially sickening water of the time.

How Prohibition changed beer

This historical survey from The Beer Connoisseur explores the breweries that survived the government's ban on alcohol production. The common denominator? They all pivoted their business models.

August A. Busch, Sr. was gifted a six-horse Clydesdale hitch to celebrate Prohibition’s end

This helped reveal the marketing power of a horse-drawn beer wagon, so it invested in a second six-horse Clydesdale hitch. The Clydesdales soon went to New York, where they drew a crowd of thousands en route to the Empire State Building. Anheuser-Busch even gifted a case of Budweiser to New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in thanks for his help in the fight against Prohibition.

America's ice cream obsession began under Prohibition

The emotional attachment to the sweet treat began during Prohibition, when many brewers started churning out ice cream instead of alcohol. Eventually, it symbolized joy during wartime and the Great Depression.

Researchers believe beer was being brewed 13,000 years ago

In 2018, archaeologists discovered traces of a wheat-and-barley-based alcoholic beverage near Haifa, in modern-day Israel, and believe it was produced by the Natufian people.

The states in America that drink the most beer

Americans, in 2020, drank on average almost twenty-six gallons of beer per adult aged twenty-one or over, over the course of the pandemic.

Revolutionary ideas were brewed in 18th-century coffeehouses

After the Boston Tea Party (1773), colonists boycotted tea and turned to coffee, with coffeehouses becoming hubs for revolutionary discussions. The stimulating import from the Caribbean helped shape the nascent American taste.

A group of daring bootleggers created NASCAR

When Prohibition made alcohol illegal in 1920, it didn’t stop Americans from making and consuming it. The law drove the practice underground. Runners risked their lives to deliver moonshine and began racing among themselves.

Beer companies turned Cinco de Mayo into a mass consumer event in the 1980s

Starting in the early 1980s, breweries including Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors created Hispanic marketing departments and sponsored Cinco de Mayo events. By 2003, American beer companies spent over $5M annually on Cinco de Mayo advertising. Some users may experience a paywall.

Some US states are now revising their happy hour bans

While states like Massachusetts started banning happy hour in the 1980s as an anti-overconsumption measure, not every state has kept these bans intact. This article dives into the arguments for and against revising the happy hour ban in Massachusetts, the first state to institute such a ban.

Bottled water started as a 19th-century wellness trend

Selling drinking water in America began at resorts in New York and West Virginia, where tourists were encouraged to take the regenerative mineral water back to their homes.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

The history of the White House Hanukkah party

Despite celebrating Christmas for hundreds of years, the US Presidential White House didn't have its first Hanukkah celebration until 1979, when Jimmy Carter oversaw the lighting of a menorah. Since then, the tradition has expanded, including lessons on playing with dreidels and big parties. See a timeline of the events here.

Champagne has a rich history in hip-hop

The drink is both aspirational and a bragging right. Famous artists name-check brands like Cristal, and up-and-comers long for the day when sparkling wine will flow like water. The trend traces back to the early 1990s and Branson B., “hip-hop’s unofficial sommelier.” The Harlem-based artist would bring bottles of his favorite bubbly to parties, celebrations, and, crucially, recording studios, where friends like the Notorious B.I.G. were laying down some of rap’s foundational tracks.

The Tariff Act of 1789 was one of America's first acts

One of the first acts ever passed by the United States Congress instituted tariffs on foreign goods. The bill was sponsored by then-Congressman James Madison and signed into law by President George Washington. The goods the first Congress felt necessary to tax included Jamaican rum, playing cards, and—of course—British tea.

Cookout and barbecue culture boomed in post-war 1950s America

Magazines like "Life" fueled the outdoor cooking craze, and by 1955, barbecue had grown into a $100 million industry. American Studies scholar Kristin L. Matthews explains that the trend fit neatly with Cold War-era consumerism and the emphasis on home ownership.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

'We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.'

- President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)

John Pemberton only sold roughly 25 gallons of Coca-Cola syrup in its first year

That equates to roughly 9 drinks per day. But once he brought it to pharmacies that hooked the syrup up to their soda fountains, sales increased significantly, with roughly 2,000 gallons being sold two years later. This video about Coca-Cola's early history is narrated by actress Jenny Slate for a Comedy Central series called "Drunk History," so not all of it is intended to be entirely factually accurate.

Environmental regulation had bipartisan support in the 1970s

During the 1970s, Democrats and Republicans alike backed landmark environmental laws. Congress passed the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts with overwhelming bipartisan majorities—reflecting broad public agreement on protecting the environment.

The 1973 ‘back to school jam’ was the night hip-hop was born

Hip-hop began in New York’s Bronx borough with the “back to school jam,” an August 1973 dance party hosted by Cindy Campbell and her brother, DJ Kool Herc, in their apartment building’s recreation room.

Guinness World Records was founded to settle drunken arguments

In the early 1950s, Hugh Beaver, Managing Director for Guinness Brewing, pitched a definitive record book as a way to resolve drunken arguments in pubs. In turn, the books would promote Guinness at the local watering hole.

Sparkling wine was a political tool in the Soviet Union

To show the world that the Soviet Union had recovered after the devastating famine of the early 1930s, leader Josef Stalin turned to a surprising source: sparkling wine. Stalin believed that if everyday citizens could access luxury goods like caviar and Champagne, it would show socialism had succeeded. The result was Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, a Soviet-made sparkler that achieved his goal of availability and affordability if not quality.

Hippies explored the possibilities of organic food

The 1960s counterculture sought to buck traditions, including culinary ones. Hippies believed that healthier food was integral to dismantling the status quo and, in turn, started health food stores, espoused vegetarian diets, and cultivated organic food, which they found to be a welcome alternative to the over-commercialized farming industry. In the decades since the movement’s decline, many of its practices have been absorbed by the mainstream.

NASA purchased about 60% of all integrated circuits from 1961 to 1965

The US government adopted the new technology to support the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer, which would help astronauts fly to the moon. This drove manufacturing up and costs down, setting the stage for the modern computing era.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

In its famous catalog, Sears sold $600 DIY house kits from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in an estimated 100,000 'Sears and Roebuck homes.'

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.