Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Dictionary Project’s daily email, is auspicious. The adjective means “fortunate, likely to bring good luck” or “indicative of a favorable outcome.” Dictionary.com defines it as “promising success” or “favored by fortune.” We see this adjective most often used in relation to the beginning of something. When a football team scores a goal in the first few minutes of a match, the announcer might call it an auspicious beginning for the that team.

The word entered the language, sort of, in the “1590s, ‘of good omen’ (implied in auspiciously), from Latin auspicium ‘divination by observing the flight of birds,’ from auspex (genitive auspicis) + –ous” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/auspicious#etymonline_v_18956). You might be curious about how one single Latin word might mean such a long phrase, so let’s look at auspicium.

Etymonline includes the word auspex and says this about it: “’one who observes flights of birds for the purpose of taking omens,’ 1590s, from Latin auspex ‘interpreter of omens given by birds,’ from PIE *awi–spek– ‘observer of birds,’ from root *awi– ‘bird’ + root *spek– ‘to observe.’ Compare Greek oionos ‘bird of prey,’ also ‘bird of omen, omen,’ and ornis ‘bird,’ which also could mean ‘omen.’” So the Romans, and perhaps the Greeks as well, had a single word for a person who observes the flight of birds just for the purpose of divination. By the way, that root *spek– “to observe” can be found in many English words, like spectacles, spectator, inspect, and respect.

Augury in ancient Rome, and even before ancient Rome, was the practice of figuring out the future from watching birds. The augur was the person officially appointed to do augury. The job was very important as the Romans wouldn’t do something—start a war, pass a law, have an election—until they were sure that the gods approved, and that approval was signaled by the augur. According to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, c. 23 AD – 79 AD), Tiresias of Thebes was responsible for the invention or discovery of augury, which is somewhat ironic in that Tiresias was the famous blind seer, so how could he see the birds (one version is that he derived the will of the gods from the songs of the birds).

On this date in 1892, the Coca-Cola Company was incorporated.

Coca-Cola was invented by a former Confederate colonel, John Pemberton. He had been wounded in the Civil War and had become addicted to opium, used at the time to relieve pain. Wanting to get off opium, he invented a drink that included an extract from the coca leaf and kola nut, which contains caffeine. His first creation was a kind of wine, but in 1886, Fulton County, GA, passed a prohibition law, and Pemberton had to turn his wine into something else. He created a non-alcoholic syrup which, when added to carbonated water, made a soft drink.

Pemberton took his syrup to a local pharmacy, which had a soda fountain (in those days, carbonated water was considered a tonic that would cure all kinds of medical issues). Pemberton was able to sell a glass of his remedy, named Coca Cola, for five cents a glass (that’s $1..60 in today’s terms, so prices have gone up.

Eventually, through what some might consider some shady dealings, Asa Griggs Candler was able to obtain full control over the product, and he incorporated the Coca-Cola Company. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But here are a couple of interesting facts about Coca-Cola. We have all heard that the original formula contained cocaine, and that is actually true. Cocaine is produced from the coca leaf. Remember that Pemberton was looking for something to replace opium, to which he was addicted. But cocaine is now illegal. Coca-cola stopped using fresh coca leaves in 1904, but it did use spent leaves, in which there were traces of cocaine. Starting in the 1920s, Coca-cola began using a stimulant-free extract from the coca leaf.

Cocaine is a Schedule 2 drug in the USA. That means that, while it is mostly illegal and considered highly addictive, it does have some recognized medical uses. Only one company, the Stepan Company, is allowed by the US government to import and process coca leaves. The Stepan Company then sells the cocaine to Mallinckrodt, a pharmaceutical company that is the only company in the USA licensed to purify and distribute cocaine, which is used as topical anesthetic in hospitals. Personally, I find it offensive that the government grants a monopoly to two companies like this in what is supposed to be a free market system. I also find it offensive that the government calls cocaine a schedule 2 drug but list marijuana as a schedule 1 drug, meaning no research is allowed, and it has no medicinal use. But maybe that is just me.

In A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage makes Coca-Cola the sixth beverage that shaped the world. He writes, “As the country mobilized [for World War II], Robert Woodruff, president of the Coca-Cola Company, issued an order that ‘every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is, and whatever it costs the company.’ The drink was already popular among soldiers and was supplied to them on exercises as a refreshing, nonintoxicating beverage. The company’s well publicized efforts to maintain the supply would, of course, have the valuable benefit of linking Coca-Cola to patriotism…” (pp. 251-252). As Coke was shipped around the world, it began to be popular with not just US soldiers but with the locals as well. “People around the world, from Polynesians to Zulus, tasted Coca-Cola for the first time” (p. 253). For better or worse, Coca-Cola was at the forefront of the exporting of American culture around the world.

It makes one wonder if John Pemberton checked with the birds before he began selling his beverage.

Today’s image is of “a coupon [that] offers a free glass of Coke in 1887” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/living/gallery/coca-cola-ads/index.html).