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Created as part of a series of advertisements that licensed the Mickey Mouse character to encourage the sale of bread and other consumer goods, products featuring Mickey Mouse became common place in America during the mid to late 1930's. The manufacturer, and the man responsible for this artifact’s creation, was Herman ‘Kay” Kamen. Starting in July 1932, Kamen became a licensing agent of the Walt Disney Company. Under Kamen, the company began to license its characters to thousands of consumer products. Toys, napkins, wallpaper, comics, and hairbrushes were a variety of products that would be created with Mickey’s likeness. In 1934, General Foods would pay one million dollars to have Mickey Mouse cut-outs on their cereal boxes. By 1935, the number of Disney licensed products sold amounted to over $35,000,000 in sales, quickly outpacing the revenue from films. Kamen’s and Disney’s mass licensing of characters for consumer goods would be so successful that it would begin a marketing trend, as other advertisers followed suit.

Black illustration of Flash Gordon and friend riding creatures with block letters on white background.

Flash Gordon is the hero of the science-fiction comic strip titled Flash Gordon. It was created in 1934 by illustrator Alex Raymond and writer Don Moore as a Sunday feature for King Features Syndicate. Intended to compete with the popular comic strip Buck Rogers (which it soon surpassed in popularity), the series concerned the intergalactic adventures of Flash Gordon, his girlfriend Dale Arden, and the scientist Dr. Hans Zarkov on the alien planet Mongo. The character appeared on television in both live-action (1954–55; 2007–08) and animated (1979–80; 1996) series. The feature-length film Flash Gordon (1980) was equal parts science fiction and high camp, and, although a failure at the box office, it was perhaps best remembered for its synthesizer-fueled soundtrack, provided by the rock group Queen.

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The Borough of Waltham Forest is in northeast London, England. The borough was formed in 1965 from the merger of the municipal boroughs of Leyton, Walthamstow and Chingford; it took its name from Waltham Forest – an institution which managed deer in south-west Essex.

Walthamstow was severely damaged by bombing in the Second World War, and after the war its appearance was much altered by the scale and variety of municipal housing schemes. Although Walthamstow in 1971 was densely built up, the disposition of the reservoirs on the west and the surviving forest on the east still distinguished it from similar urbanized areas.

The ducklings club most likely refers to a youth swimming lessons group in the UK.

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The Black Eagle became the symbol of the United Farm Workers in 1962. The colors were chosen by Cesar Chavez, a community organizer who led strikes throughout the 1960's on behalf of farm workers. The majority of farm workers were Latin American. As such, they were subject to racial discrimination and anti-immigration sentiment in the communities where they worked. The most famous of these protests were the Delano grape strikes which lasted for five years between 1965 and 1970, during which more than 1,000 laborers picketed for higher wages and health benefits. These rights were eventually granted when the grape growers signed contracts with the UFW, affecting more than 10,000 farm workers nationwide.

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Stokely Carmichael was still a freshman at Howard University the first time he was arrested for participating in the Freedom Rides, an effort led by the Congress of Racial Equality to desegregate interstate buses. He later went on to serve as the chairman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and originated the phrase "Black Power" while protesting James Meredith's attempted assassination in the March Against Fear of 1966. In 1965, Carmichael worked with residents of Lowndes County in Alabama to increase the number of black voters from 70 to 2,600. In order to distance himself from the majority-white Democratic Party, he created the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, and chose the black panther as its mascot, which later inspired the Black Panther Party, of which he was made Honorary Prime Minister in 1968. Carmichael was the subject of a smear campaign by the FBI which damaged his relationship with the BPP and the SNCC. In the second half of his life, Carmichael moved to Africa and worked with the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, where he remained until his death in 1998.

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The National Council for Jewish Women (NCJW) was founded in 1893 by Hannah G. Solomon after she and other Jewish women were prevented from playing a substantive role in the Chicago World's Fair. Initially, the council worked to help women regain connection with their Jewish faith and to assist Jewish immigrants in becoming self-sufficient. Throughout the early twentieth century, the NCJW broadened its scope to other social justice issues, such as arguing for an anti-lynching law, and passing the Nineteenth Amendment. Current campaigns include an attempt to end domestic violence, a push for wider contraceptive education and access, and a campaign to safeguard voting rights for all Americans.

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By the mid 1960's, many in the U.S. had become disillusioned with the promises of progress made by John F. Kennedy upon his election. In 1964, when the draft was introduced for the Vietnam War, many younger Americans joined the anti-war movement and began protesting supported by prominent intellectuals and musicians of the day. These protests combined with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, The Feminine Mystique and second-wave feminism, and the Stonewall Riots at the end of the decade created a strong opposition to the establishment at large. "Power to the People," became the rallying cry of the 1960's. On the possibilities and shortcomings of people's power, Walter Lippmann wrote, "What then are the true boundaries of the people's power?...They can elect the government. They can remove it."

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Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is an international issue that many find controversial. The notion that a government can have a right to kill someone, regardless of the reason, is abhorrent to many social and political groups. Some justice systems conduct unfair trials, may execute someone for political gain, or have corrupt or discriminatory court systems based on opposition to race, religion, or sexuality. Accused may be convicted of a crime, but found out to be innocent later. The death penalty does not allow mistakes to be fixed since those wronged are deceased.

Excluding the undisclosed numbers from some countries, 690 people were executed in 2018 under the death penalty. By the end of 2018, a total of 106 countries had completely abolished the death penalty and organizations like Amnesty International hope to grow that number. Once again excluding the undisclosed countries, 75% of all executions take place in just four countries, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and Iraq.