Max T

Canfield's Diet Chocolate Fudge soda is a zero-calorie, aspartame-sweetened carbonated soft drink canned and distributed by the A.J. Canfield Company of Elgin, Illinois, USA, a division of Select Beverages. Production for the midwestern United States is handled by the American Bottling Company, a subsidiary of Keurig Dr Pepper and distribution by Kehe Foods of Chicago.

The beverage was introduced in 1972 by 32-year-old Alan B. Canfield, senior vice president of Elgin, Illinois-based A.J. Canfield Beverages, a company founded by his grandfather. Canfield was a regular dieter and chocolate lover, and got the idea the year before and brought a two-pound box of fudge to Manny Wesber, the company's chief chemist.

Wesber succeeded in creating a saccharin-sweetened chemically-created concoction, entirely artificially flavored. The drink sold moderately well among Canfield's other brands, with sales remaining steady over the next 13 years.

Canfield's Diet Chocolate Fudge by this time sweetened with aspartame. When Chicago Tribune reporter Bob Greene reviewed the product and described it as tasting "like a calorie-free hot fudge sundae," sales went from lukewarm to highly successful in the soft drink market practically overnight.

By 1985, regional bottlers across the United States were seeking franchise rights. With these rights in place, more than 200 million cans of Canfield's Diet Chocolate Fudge soda were sold in 1985. As competition from other makers increased, Canfield's grew increasingly protective of their "Chocolate Fudge" moniker, going so far as to sue rival maker Vess Beverages over their use of the name, "Vess Diet Chocolate Fudge." A federal district court judge ruled in favor of Canfield and issued a preliminary injunction disallowing the use of the word "fudge" on their packaging. Though the injunction was later overturned, the case, known as Canfield v. Honickman, continues to be used as an example during the study of trademark product law.

Spinoffs proved less successful. 1987 saw the introduction of "Diet Cherry Chocolate Fudge" and "Diet Peanut Chocolate Fudge," both of which are still sold today in limited numbers.

In 1995, the A.J. Canfield Company was sold to Select Beverages for an undisclosed sum. The company's plant in Elgin, which had been operating since the 1930s, closed the following year. Production of the Diet Chocolate Fudge drinks were moved to another plant.

While classed with binding knots, such as the reef knot and miller's knot, the bottle sling is able to perform a function for which most other binding knots are unsuited. The bottle sling's specific form allows it to grip a cylinder, assuming it has even a slight flare or collar, and lift it along its axis when the knot is loaded by all four strands. With an appropriate size cord, most wine bottles can be reliably suspended with this knot.

Mockup of a rope fiador with the doubled "hackamore knot" at the bottom

The knot is also said to have been used as an improvised emergency horse bridle when the rope was the only material at hand. Its use is described with the central parts of the knot acting as a bit, one of the knot's outer bights passing over the top of the animal's muzzle, and the other passing under the jaw to form the noseband. The closed loop end of the knot would be placed over the animal's head and behind the ears, as a crownpiece, and the two free ends coming off under the chin used as reins. It was intended only for temporary use. However, at least one author has disputed this as "nonsense" and suggests its only proper equestrian use is in a doubled form, in this context known as a hackamore knot, to secure the fiador to the bosal in some hackamore designs.

A bottle cage is a device used to affix a water bottle to a bicycle. Composed of plastic, aluminum, stainless steel, titanium or carbon fiber, it is attached to the main frame of a bicycle, the handlebars, behind the saddle, or, in uncommon cases, the fork. Most modern bicycles have threaded holes in the frame to hold the bottle cage, often called braze-ons even though they may be welded, glued, riveted, or moulded into the frame material. Clamps are necessary on bicycles not so equipped, such as older or less expensive models.