Good Thursday morning.
If you’ve been following along here for a while, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I’m not much of a soda drinker. I didn’t grow up with it in the house; we were more of a seltzer family (like a lot of other New York Jews, I know). Soda was a treat that appeared at other people’s birthday parties and special events.
If I was out with my parents and celebrating something, I might be allowed a Shirley Temple, which is typically made with ginger-ale or lemon-lime soda of some sort. Even when I did get the green light to drink a soda, it usually wasn’t Coca-Cola, because of the caffeine.
These days, I still eschew soda, largely because of the sugar, but there are times when nothing hits like an ice cold Diet Coke. Those times usually occur when it’s very hot out, but never in the morning. I am a coffee girl, through and through.
I do not understand how people drink Coke in the morning – and, for the record, it has far less caffeine than an average cup of coffee, though I was today days old when I discovered that there’s more caffeine in a 12 oz. Diet Coke (46 mg) than the regular or zero sugar version (34 mg).
Coke is more or less ubiquitous. It is sold around the world and is one of the most widely recognized corporate brands on the planet. The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest manufacturer, distributor, and marketer of non-alcoholic beverages, with more than 500 brands and 3,500 beverages on offer – from juices and waters, to teas, coffees, smoothies, and, of course, soda.
It all started on this day in 1886, when the first Coca-Cola was served at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. The original recipe called for, among other things, coca extract, which, as you may or may not know, includes cocaine.
It was the brainchild of a pharmacist named John S. Pemberton, who as a Confederate Army veteran, was reportedly struggling with a morphine addiction and looking for an alternative to that drug.
Coca-Cola also originally contained alcohol, because mixing it with cocaine induces a higher state of euphoria, but Prohibition made that a problem, and so the booze was subbed out for sugar water.
The drink was nevertheless highly addictive, which drew criticism. In response, coca was removed from the recipe in 1903 – a full 11 years before the United States moved to make cocaine illegal. Today, the cocaine extracted from coca leaves to make Coca-Cola is reportedly sold to pharmaceutical companies.
Coca-Cola didn’t take off right away, and since Pemberton didn’t see a promising future in what was then marketed as a “tonic,” he sold the rights for $1,750 shortly before his death in 1888.
The Coca-Cola recipe ended up in the hands of another Atlantan, a man named Asa Griggs Candler Sr., who went on to found the Coca-Cola company and lay the groundwork for it to develop into the behemoth of a business that it is today.
The Candler family sold their stake in Coca-Cola in 1919, and invested in real estate development. They were hit hard by the foreclosure crisis in the early 2000s, losing more than $37 million. The company is now publicly traded, with more than 63 percent of shares held by thousands of individuals and institutions. Berkshire Hathaway is the largest shareholder.
Coca-Cola’s annual revenue is about $46 billion annually; its brand value exceeds $98 billion. And to think it all started to the sale of a simple “tonic” at an Atlanta pharmacy. Mind blowing.
Today will be sort of gloomy, with overcast skies and temperatures in the mid-60s. The rain will hold off until evening, but the chance of rain is 100 percent.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump is expected to announce today that the United States will strike a trade agreement with Britain, according to three people familiar with the plans.
The announcement will be the first in what the White House hopes is a series of trade agreements since it imposed tariffs against allies and adversaries, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The announcement, which Trump teased late yesterday on Truth Social as being with a “big, and highly respected country,” is expected to be a framework of an agreement with tariff adjustments.
Toyota Motor forecast a 21% profit decline for the current financial year, as the strain from Trump’s tariffs and an appreciating yen take some of the shine off strong hybrid demand.
Trump said he would nominate Casey Means, a Stanford-educated doctor turned critic of corporate influence on medicine and health, as surgeon general, after his initial pick, former Fox News contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who withdrew her nomination.
Trump said Means “will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda.”
Dr. Means has catapulted into the MAHA sphere over the past year, alongside her brother Calley Means, a prominent advisor to Sec. Kennedy following the publication of their book Good Energy.
Trump’s administration must return detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk to Vermont, an appeals court ruled yesterday.
Trump is considering trying to change the name of the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Arabia or the Arabian Gulf, and will make a final decision on the issue after a briefing by advisers and before leaving on a three-day trip to the Middle East next week.
Black smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel chimney yesterday after the first round of voting by the College of Cardinals, indicating no consensus on a new pope.
The Vatican conclave will continue with as many as four more rounds of voting. A two-thirds majority of the 133 cardinals is required to select a new leader for the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.
Starting today, the cardinals will vote twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. There will be smoke at the end of the morning session and the afternoon session, unless a pope is elected earlier.
House moderates are telling Republican leaders they won’t walk the plank and vote for Medicaid cuts in the party’s “big, beautiful bill” only to see the Senate strip them out — their latest warning shot in the effort to enact President Trump’s legislative agenda.
Trump issued an early endorsement of Republican Rep. Mike Lawler’s re-election next year for a battleground House swing district in the Hudson Valley.
Trump’s effusive early backing of Lawler to stay put in the House spurred speculation that it paves a path for North Country Rep. Elise. Stefanik to get the GOP nomination for governor next year, sources said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City’s five district attorneys ran a victory lap on a revamp to the state’s discovery laws included in a sprawling budget bill.
The state budget being adopted this week will eliminate the $229,000-a-year salary of Tremaine Wright, a former state assemblywoman who was appointed chair of the Cannabis Control Board by Gov. Kathy Hochul in September 2021.
Democratic leaders packed the long-overdue state budget with policy measures that will benefit themselves including changes that can help bolster their reelection bids with taxpayer dough.
The governor is facing a wave of criticism over her efforts to weaken an obscure, century-old law that requires private schools to provide a basic education. Changing the law has been a top priority of the state’s Hasidic leaders.
Hochul and state lawmakers have agreed to send what they’re calling “inflation refund” checks to more than three-quarters of state tax filers later this year.
“Working with our partners in the Legislature we’ve reached an agreement to pass a balanced, fiscally responsible budget,” Hochul told reporters. “Good things take time, and this budget is going to make a real difference for New York families.”
“This governor seems to think she is a monarch of sorts,” state Sen. James Skoufis said. “She seems very empowered with a budget that is 37 days late.”
Albany Democrats are expected to sign off on a provision allowing certain officials to tap into a $10 million fund to cover “any reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred” — even as part of probes not directly related to their state employment.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie wants to add 3 days to the 2025 legislative session, since budget came in so late, officials say. The session would end June 17.
New York has filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the Trump administration’s reorganization of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March that it would cut 20,000 full-time employees.
Tutoring programs that were abruptly shuttered by the federal government five weeks ago may be able to reopen soon.
A New York state appeals court has ruled that the new state law that will move many local elections to line up with state and federal elections in even-numbered years is constitutional, reversing a lower court judge’s decision last fall.
Some retiring NYPD officers will be getting a boost in their pensions courtesy of state lawmakers who began voting on the final state budget yesterday. But the increase could cost New York City tens of millions of dollars in the coming decades.
New York could be a stumbling block for billionaire Elon Musk’s attempts to launch a person-to-person payment system on his platform X.
The state Health Department announced that the 2024-2025 flu season has seen the highest recorded death toll ever among children who contracted the respiratory illness.
Amid declining vaccination rates, the 2024-25 influenza season exacted a heavy toll, with 216 pediatric deaths nationwide.
Brianna Suggs, a longtime aide to Mayor Eric Adams, is back in her old job fundraising for his campaign after being reassigned to an administrative role in the wake of an FBI raid on her home in November 2023.
New York City’s Campaign Finance Board is sticking to its guns in denying Adams more than $4 million in public matching funds for his reelection run — and will not give him another chance to challenge the decision until mid-July.
Speaking to a room full of real estate leaders, Adams picked up on a major theme of the mayoral race: housing and how to build more of it.
Adams continued to stray from the city’s current plan to shutter Rikers Island this week, suggesting that he believes the troubled jail complex could remain open and be repaired, rather than shuttered.
Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral rivals have moved from rehashing the controversies that forced him to resign as governor to challenging him on the substance of what the next mayor must do for New York tenants.
Trump’s proposed budget released last week would shred New York’s housing safety net by cutting billions of dollars in federal aid, putting limits on vouchers used by some 500,000 people statewide.
Mayoral candidate and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander said he’s so Jewish “that I almost became a rabbi” while discussing his faith and the fight against antisemitism.
Nearly 2,000 migrants are still being housed in the historic Roosevelt Hotel — despite the city insisting the makeshift shelter will be shuttering next month.
Federal investigators said the sightseeing helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River last month, killing all six people on board, broke apart in midair just moments before hitting the water.
In a preliminary report released yesterday the National Transportation Safety Board said surveillance video captured the aircraft separating into three major components — the fuselage, main rotor and tail — as it flew over Jersey City.
Masked pro-Palestinian protesters flooded into Columbia University’s main library yesterday afternoon, pushing past a security guard and occupying a reading room.
Video posted on social media shows a large group of activists shoving past a security guard at the library’s front entrance, who tried in vain to stop the mob but was quickly overcome.
Around 80 agitators were taken into custody, as the Ivy League school faced another chaotic day on its Morningside Heights campus that officials said left a pair of school safety officers injured.
The protesters, wearing masks and kaffiyehs, had burst through a security gate shortly after 3 p.m. and hung banners in the soaring main room of Butler Library’s second floor, renaming the space “the Basel Al-Araj Popular University.”
A New York man has been charged with federal hate crimes in three assaults on Jewish protesters at demonstrations over the war in Gaza, according to an indictment released yesterday.
Three college presidents apologized for not acting more aggressively to curb antisemitism on their campuses during a House committee hearing yesterday, in what Republicans billed as an effort to examine colleges beyond the Ivy League.
Long Island Rail Road commuters were delayed yesterday morning after an Amtrak work crew damaged a section of track near the East River Tunnel during early-morning work.
Westchester County’s iconic amusement park Playland will open Memorial Day Weekend after weeks of uncertainty.
An unstable former New York state trooper almost copped to faking a shooting at a Long Island traffic stop — but derailed his confession by making another frank admission.
Attorneys for the mother of an Albany man who died last fall following an altercation at Fishkill Correctional Facility that involved correction officers have filed a petition seeking to compel a medical examiner to turn over their records on his autopsy.
After a contentious proposed $36.9 million Bethlehem library renovation plan that was overwhelmingly rejected by voters last December, an upcoming budget and trustee vote is proving to be a much quieter affair.
Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello plans on having a pool open to the public in Knickerbacker Park once again by 2026, with crews slated to break ground within the next few weeks.
Saratoga County authorities said they’ve filed criminally negligent homicide charges against the parents of a 3-year-old girl who died in February.
The third season of the late 1800s drama “Gilded Age”, packed with local sights, is set to debut in late June on HBO on cable services and the Max streaming app.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
