Some 57 years ago, two historic African American figures met in the city of Atlanta at a sports event co-sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company. The event was the Annual Sports Jamboree of the “100% Wrong Club”, a unit of the sports department of the Atlanta Daily World newspaper. The historic figures? Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in Major League Baseball, and Mrs. Mary Alexander, the first African American model to appear in Coca-Cola advertising. “That was the highlight of my life”, Mrs. Alexander shared with me a few weeks ago when recounting the experience. “I was modeling for Coke and they asked me if I would come to the [sports program] and I said, ‘Yes! What do I do?’ and they replied, ‘You just go there and meet the people and talk and drink Coke.’ I said ‘fine!’” In addition to meeting Jackie Robinson, she also met Branch Rickey, the general manager who signed Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

I am a HUGE University of Kentucky basketball fan, and have been since 1993. So, you can imagine how delighted I was we received this a pair of tickets from a 2009 Kentucky game. They came in to the Archives with a collection of tickets with the Coke logo on them. The 2009-2010 team just happens to be my favorite Kentucky team in my nearly 20 years of rooting for them. Tonight is "Midnight Madness", or as it is called at Kentucky, "Big Blue Madness", which is the official launch of practices for the team for the season. At Kentucky, 24,000 tickets sold out in less than an hour to watch this event! Every now and then, I have to tolerate a colleague or two who prefer the Duke Blue Devils National Championship commemorative Coke bottles, but that's when I point them to the collectibles pictured below. Go Big Blue!

With the first week of the FIFA World Cup in full swing I am getting excited by all the action and the vuvuzelas. If you want to experience some of the excitement here in Atlanta, the World of Coca-Cola now has a special 3-D film airing that was shown during the World Cup Trophy Tour.  It is an exciting new addition that will only be there until July 5th.

If you miss that but still want to see some World Cup items, check out the Milestones of Refreshment gallery and keep one the lookout for a miniature version of the trophy.

Now that the Vancouver Games are drawing to an end, I wanted to devote this weeks Spotlight on the World of Coca-Cola to the new exhibit that just opened featuring the Vancouver Torch.

If you are in Atlanta, relive some of the Olympic moments from the past two weeks and read the story of some of the Olympic Torchbearers.