Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co product called the "smoke ball" and claimed it to be a cure for influenza and a number of other diseases. (The 1889–1890 flu pandemic was estimated to have killed 1 million people.) The smoke ball was a rubber ball with a tube attached. It was filled with carbolic acid (or phenol). The tube would be inserted into a user's nose and squeezed at the bottom to release the vapours. The nose would run, ostensibly flushing out viral infections. The Company published advertisements in the "Pall Mall Gazette" and other newspapers on November 13, 1891, claiming that it would pay £100
Name-letter effect work has been called "seminal" by Stieger, Voracek, and Formann in their 2012 meta-analysis of 44 publications on the effect. Their meta-analysis found no trace of publication bias. In her 2014 meta-analysis of dozens of name-letter effect studies, Hoorens called the effect robust. She noted robustness in: Various explanations for the name-letter effect have been explored. Several explanations which seemed plausible at first have since been rejected. People may simply like most what they see most. Letters that appear more frequently in everyday usage also occur more often in people's names. Forer, in 1940, and Alluisi and Adams, in 1962,