Bright orange button with black text on a sign that the illustration of Schroeder, a Peanuts character, is holding. 

Schroeder is one of the beloved characters in the Peanuts comic strip created by Charles Schultz. The character idolizes the classical composer Beethoven. He is the only one of the Peanuts clan that celebrates Beethoven’s birthday, which is on December 16th. Starting in 1953, and in almost every year after that, Schroeder acknowledges Beethoven’s birthday in some form. The most commonly found reference shows Schroeder holding up signs depicting how many days it is until Beethoven’s birthday.

Red white and blue vertical stripes make up the background of this button. A ribbon with Lady Liberty in yellow is in the foreground and white text outlined in black. 

Liberty is a western film serial released by Universal Pictures in 1916. In the film, an American heiress, Liberty Horton, is kidnapped by a Mexican rebel and ransomed. Serial films were popular in the early twentieth century and consisted of a long film edited into chapters. The chapters were then released to theaters in consecutive order, and each episode ended with a cliffhanger to keep audiences coming back to see the next chapter. Westerns were a popular film serial genre, along with crime fiction, comic strip characters, and science fiction.

Light green button with dark green text. 

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Light blue button with black text and two hearts with the soap opera titles in them. A little cherub holds the hearts. 

“Love in the Afternoon” was an advertising campaign for General Hospital from 1975 to 1985. It focused on the love lives of the main characters of the show.

General Hospital is an American soap opera that has been on air for over 50 years! The show was created by husband-and-wife duo Frank and Doris Hursley. Set in the fictional town of Port Charles in upstate New York, the show follows the loves, lives, and danger of all the characters. General Hospital has won countless awards for Daytime Emmys like Outstanding Drama Series, Lead Actor/ess, and Supporting Actor. Further, the show has won awards by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Daytime Serials and by the Writers Guild of America for Daytime Serials. The success of General Hospital has led to the creation of spin-off dramas.

One Life To Live was created by Agnes Nixon and premiered in 1968 and ran through 2013. It was one of the first shows to depict people from all different backgrounds, interracial relationships, and drug addiction. It focuses on the Lord family in Pennsylvania. Its main character, played by Erika Slezak, won a record six Daytime Emmy Awards. 

Black text with the image of Garfield the cat laying on a beach under an umbrella with a drink.

Garfield, the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world since 2002, was first published in 1978. Cartoonist Jim Davis decided to focus his comic on a cat to fill what he saw as a hole in the market. Davis was a business major at Ball State and worked in advertising, and always acutely managed Garfield as a brand as much as a comic. He recognized the marketability of animal characters and noticed that there were many popular cartoon dogs, but no cats. So he created Garfield, naming him after his grandfather John Garfield Davis, a man Davis said had "a gruff exterior but a soft heart."

An image of Mickey Mouse in a rocket ship being chased by Pete in a UFO with red and yellow text. 

Disney Comics was a publishing company, owned by The Walt Disney Company, that operated from 1990-1993. The company was created so that The Walt Disney Company would not have to rely on other publishing companies to continue publication of their comic book series, which began in 1940. Early in the history of the series, the comic books primarily contained reprints of Disney comic strips, but by the mid 1940s, original stories and serials were included in the books. In addition to Disney Comics, the comic book series has been published by six other companies over the years.

The whole button is illustrated with an image of Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother in the foreground with the mice, including Gus Gus. In the background, the carriage drawn by horses is pictured and so is the castle. 

The illustration depicts Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother savior, from the feature film Cinderella, produced by Walt Disney and released on February 15, 1950. Cinderella is a folk tale about a young woman living in undesirable conditions, whose fortune is suddenly changed in her favor. There are thousands of variations of the story from around the world. Cinderella is considered to be representative of both Disney's "golden era" animations made in the 1930s and 1940s, and the less critically-acclaimed productions of the 1950s. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Sound, Best Song and Best Original Score, and was re-released in theaters in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981 and 1987, before being released on VHS and laserdisc in 1988. 

The title character's style and mannerisms in the 1950 film were largely based on Helene Stanley, the live-action model for Cinderella and one of her step-sisters, Anastasia, as well as Ilene Woods, Cinderella's voice actress. Artist Salvador Dali influenced Cinderella's dress that is torn up by her step-sisters, and the gown Cinderella wears to the ball was inspired by French haute couture, specifically Christian Dior's style, which became well-known in the US in 1947. 

Image of a cartoon character on a white hill with blue sky in the background. The character has a red coat on and red feathers. 

The Shmoo was introduced in the Li'l Abner comic strip in 1948. Created by cartoonist Al Capp, the Shmoo is shaped like a bowling pin and is very amiable. It also reproduces prodigiously, and its only wish is to help mankind. In the comic strip, the multiplying Shmoos are eventually deemed a menace and hunted down. Though the Shmoo appeared sparingly in Li'l Abner, it inspired nearly 100 products and became a pop culture sensation. Candy-filled Shmoos were even dropped over West Berlin as part of "Operation Little Vittles" during the 1948 Berlin Airlift. The Shmoo also generated debate about its social implications as an allegory on mankind's greed.

Orange text over a photograph of Harrison Ford.

The 1982 science fiction film, Blade Runner, depicting future Los Angeles, was directed by Ridley Scott and stars Harrison Ford as detective Rick Deckard. Decades later, Ford reprised the same role in the 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049.

Black text on a white button around a grey image of a statue of Lincoln's head

This button was made in the early 1900s. The image is of the head of the statue in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., which was built between 1914 and 1922. This statue was meant to convey Lincoln's strength and compassion.

Efforts to create a memorial for Abraham Lincoln began in the 1860s after the President's death. Plans to create a memorial were discussed again starting in 1902 under President McKinley, but met with controversy over where to build it and what it should look like.