Illustration of a box with a red check mark with green text on a yellow background.

Bennigan's Irish American Grill & Tavern began in Atlanta, Georgia in 1976 as a mid-range casual dining restaurant serving Irish American cuisine. Following a 2011 organizational and marketing restructure, they rebranded to simply Bennigan's and focused on a high quality service and bar fare. These buttons were likely worn by waiters and bartenders in the original restaurants to advertise that they would ask for proper identification to patrons interested in purchasing alcoholic beverages. 

Black text on an orange background.

Leslie Tobin ran a shop in the 1960s in Philadelphia called "The Apparatus". The sold incense, jewelry, buttons, posters, and other hippie ephemera. The shop faced legal troubles in 1969 when it was raided several times by the Morals Squad of the Philadelphia Police Department due to complaints about obscene items—including buttons like this. No charges were filed, as buttons are a form of protected free speech. As Tobin stated in court, the buttons "were a social comment on the mores and hypocrisy of our society." In our judgment, 'Stop Vietnam' is as much speech on a button as it is in a newspaper, book or movie."

Red text inside an illustration of the state of Oregon in white with a red background.

Oregon is a U.S. state in the Pacific Northwest, which has a particularly unique history. It was inhabited by Paleo-Americans over 15,000 years ago, and has since been home to many Native American nations. Spanish explorers first sailed up the coast in the late 1500s, and Lewis and Clark made their famous expedition to the area in the 1800s. This sparked the Oregon Trail with many settlers moving West. Oregon’s admission to the Union has shaky beginnings. It was against slavery, but did not allow black people into its territory. Although Congress reluctantly admitted Oregon into the Union as a free state in 1859, its black exclusion laws were not fully repealed until the 1920s. 

However, today Oregon is a bastion of freedom and equality, being among the first states to legalize gay marriage, physician-assisted suicide, and recreational marijuana.

White and green text with a white circle in the middle of the button on a blue background.

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White text inside a red circle with white, yellowish-green and black concentric circles.

The American Tobacco Company introduced Lucky Strike cigarettes in 1916, acquiring its name from a chewing tobacco that originated in 1871. In the 1930s, it was the best-selling cigarette in the United States, controlling 39 percent of the market in 1931. However, sales dwindled as smokers sought filtered cigarettes. In the 1980s, Lucky Strike had less than 1 percent of the market. The company introduced a new filtered, low-tar cigarette with the advertising slogan “Lucky Strikes Again” aimed at male smokers ages 21 to 35 in the early 1980s. In the 2000s and 2010s, the company saw an uptick in sales, which some have tied to the television drama Mad Men. In the show, Lucky Strike is the client of a New York City advertising agency, and the cigarette is frequently smoked by many characters. Lucky Strike sold 23 billion packets of cigarettes in 2007 when the series first aired. In 2012 the company sold 33 billion.  

Illustration of smiling anthropomorphic "dilly bar" style ice cream wearing cowboy hat, neckerchief, gloves, spurred boots, and chaps holding a glowing "D" shaped branding iron.  Red text on a white background.

Dairy Queen's cowboy-themed "Dilly Bar" character, complete with a "D" branding iron, graced the ice cream bar’s paper wrappers throughout the latter part of the 1950s. The franchise's famous "Dilly Bar" is a circular soft-serve ice cream treat on a stick, coated in either chocolate or butterscotch, and topped with the trademark Dairy Queen swirl. The bar's creator, Robert Litherland, was the co-owner of a Dairy Queen store in Moorehead, Minnesota, when he introduced it to headquarters in 1955, making it an instant staple for the franchise. While demonstrating the technique of how one was made, the demonstrator held up the completed ice cream treat and pronounced, “Now isn’t that a dilly!” and the name was born, although never copyrighted.

Black text on a blue background

The phrase "let's lock loins" dates back to 1960s counterculture and is tied to the “free love” movement. The alliterative expression means to have sex with someone and is not in common use today.

Illustration of a 19th century man's shirt with black text above and below on a white background

"Keep Your Shirt On" is a phrase often used to mean stay calm. The origin is unknown, but it was likely formed at the time when people would take off their good shirts to get ready for a fist fight where they might get dirty or bloodied.

Small pinback buttons were often included in cigarette packs in the late 1800s and early 1900s. “Keep Your Shirt On” features a pen and ink drawing of a 19th century man’s dress shirt and was given as a complement or prize in High Admiral Cigarettes, a product of the National Cigarette and Tobacco Company. Admiral Cigarettes also included trading cards with their cigarettes.

Noted on the back on the High Admiral Cigarette pinback button is backing paper by the Whitehead and Hoag Company.  The Whitehead & Hoag company was formed in 1892 in Newark, New Jersey, as a partnership between printer Benjamin S. Whitehead and paper merchant Chester R. Hoag. It soon became the largest manufacturer of novelty advertising in the United States, eventually making over 5,000 different items. In the 1890s, it held three different button patents, and during the 1896 presidential election, campaign buttons swept the nation for the first time.

Illustration of hand doing a peace sign with yellow text outlined in black on a blue background.

Candidates for the 1972 U.S. presidential election included the popular Republican incumbent Richard M. Nixon and his Democratic challenger George McGovern. Throughout his campaign, Nixon campaigned on his success in foreign affairs and championed the strong economy. McGovern, on the other hand, promised an immediate end to the Vietnam War and guaranteed a minimum income.

In the end, Nixon won in a landslide and secured 520 electoral votes compared to McGovern’s modest tally of 17. To put it another way, Nixon won the hearts and votes of 46 million Americans, which was a staggering 18 million more than what was under the Democratic nominee’s belt. So sound was Nixon’s victory that it came to represent the widest popular vote margin in a post-World War II presidential election. In spite of early polls accurately predicting this resounding win, Nixon could not help but cheat to ensure his victory. In the summer of 1972, Nixon’s reelection committee infamously wiretapped the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate complex. This “Watergate scandal” eventually landed the president in hot water and prompted him to resign from office in August 1974.