To keep winter colds away, reporters at the Elkhart Indiana Truth used to down a mixture of aspirin and bicarbonate of soda. Andrew Hubble Beardsley, son of Albert Beardsley, a partner at Elkhart's Miles Medical Company, heard about it. What impressed him most was that everyone at the Elkhart Truth seemed to have escaped the great flu epidemics of 1918 and 1927. So in 1931, Beardsley had a Miles chemist make him a tablet composed of aspirin, bicarbonate of soda and citric acid - and Alka Seltzer was born. Incidentally, two years later, in 1933, sales of Alka Seltzer skyrocketed. Why? Prohibition had ended and drinking began. Word got around that Alka-Seltzer was good for hangovers and Miles sales doubled every year for the next seven years.