Black illustration of a lit candle wrapped in barbed wire and black text on an amber colored background.

Some people attribute Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for coming up with the saying, "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." It refers to the notion that when someone finds themself in a difficult situation, don’t complain about it. Instead, one should take actions to overcome and improve the situation.

This phrase has also been attributed to Chinese proverbs or Confucius. These, however, are misattributes. The oldest written usage is from W. L. Watkinson's sermon 'The Invincible Strategy' collected in 1907 in The Supreme Conquest.

Amnesty International is a global organization campaigning for human rights around the world. Their logo is a candle with a wire around it. They have adopted the phrase, "better to light a candle than curse the darkness," as their brand motto. The organization also predominantly uses the bright color yellow to spread their message. Amnesty International is a non-profit based in England and Wales.

Divided into three unequal sections, the top section displays white text on a red background, the middle section, the largest, features black text on a white background, and the small, bottom section shows white text on a blue background.

Planned Parenthood has a controversial history: just nine days after Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger opened the country’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, police raided and shut it down. Sanger was jailed for 30 days and after her release aligned herself with white supremacist groups in an effort to further an agenda of eugenics. Despite this history, Planned Parenthood funded the creation of the first birth control pill in 1948, which allowed for easy and effective family planning for people with uteruses across the United States. Today, Planned Parenthood provides general healthcare to 2.4 million patients annually along with continuing to champion reproductive justice globally.

Comic book illustration depicting Conan, wearing a cloak and a horned helm, walking with some villagers.

One of the most iconic American literary figures, Conan the Barbarian first appeared in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1932. Author Robert E. Howard intended Conan to be a spiritual successor to his earlier pulp publications Kull the Conqueror, furthering the sword-and-sorcery genre he originated. The character soon gained popularity and has since been adapted into films, animated- and live-action television shows, comics, and various games.

Although the first Conan comic was an unauthorized series published in Mexico in 1952, the versions printed by Marvel Comics remain the most well-known. The company acquired the rights to Conan in 1970 and began publishing Conan the Barbarian, the success of which led to the highly-acclaimed The Savage Sword of Conan, first published in 1974. This button contains a panel from the fifth issue of Conan the Barbarian. The artist is Barry Smith. 

Close up photograph of Captain Kirk's face on an indistinct dark brown and black background.

James Tiberius Kirk served as captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 in Star Trek: The Original Series. James Kirk was portrayed by William Shatner for the entirety of the series, from 1966-1969. Captain Kirk, portrayed by Shatner, has been seen in various Star Trek films after The Original Series ended, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. His final appearance as Kirk was in Star Trek: Generations in 1994.

The character of James T. Kirk, however, went on without Shatner. In 2009, Chris Pine took on the role  in J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek and played the legendary captain for two more films: Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek: Beyond (2016). More recently, the character was portrayed by Paul Wesley on the final episode of the first season of the television show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022).

Sky blue text on a white background.

The first effective flu vaccines were tested in clinical trials in the mid-1930s after a group of scientists were able to recreate the virus in hen eggs. The vaccine was developed after a group of English scientists discovered that influenza was caused by a virus and not bacteria as was originally believed. 

The race to create an effective vaccine was spurred by the devastation wrought by the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918 (also known as the Spanish flu), which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Before World War II, the United States government funded a wartime program to develop vaccines as the flu accounted for roughly half of US military casualties during World War I. As a result, the first inactivated flu vaccine was developed at the University of Michigan in 1945 and was tested on United States soldiers. 

To this day, most flu vaccines are made using egg-based technology similar to the one created in the vaccine’s early days. 

White text on a red background.

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White text on a blue background with gold lines running horizontally through. Gold runs along the outer edge and features black text that wraps the bottom half.

The Association for Women in Science, or AWIS, founded in 1971, was a product of the annual Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. After its inception, the group appointed an executive director, created an office in Washington D.C., and started branches throughout the country. The association’s early work included lawsuits fighting for better representation in the field. Some of the goals of the organization are to reduce discrimination, lower pay, and professional isolation. The current association meets to focus on things such as fair compensation and work-life integration.

Illustration of a brown football with white lacing on yellow background. White text is written on the football.

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On a white background a black and white photograph of a man's face is centered on the button. A red border of two lines, one thick and one thin makes a circle around  the image broken up below the image with the red uppercase text "MEYERS".

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On a white background photographs of the faces of Lyndon B. Johnson (left) and Hubert H. Humphrey (right) are centered on the button with red uppercase "AFL-CIO COPE" text curved above the image and "For LBJ &  HHH" curved below in blue uppercase text.

AFL-CIO is the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. The group was formed in 1955 when the separate groups, AFL and CIO, combined. This organization is the largest alliance of unions in the US with fifty-six national and international unions. Union membership was at its peak in 1979 with almost twenty million members, however, currently, they have more than twelve million members. Members include retired and current workers. Until 2005 they represented almost all unionized workers in the United States, however, over time unions have broken off and formed different groups some of which have joined back over time. In 1965 sitting president Lyndon B. Johnson was running with Hubert H. Humphrey for the Democratic Party. The organization put its support behind these candidates and has continuously supported the Democratic Party over the years due to the party aligning with its values.